


🌿 Specialized Pruning Practices 🌱

by quarter_life_crisis



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, M/M, Polyamory, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, but this isnt meant to be a downer, eventually, grimmjow isnt doing too hot, lets watch him get his shit together, now with 5 percent more ichigo, some of these idiots are with other people before they find eachother, theres a lot of ‘eventually’ tags, which i will aim to treat with the gravity they deserve, will be some alcoholism and abuse themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:40:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24741691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarter_life_crisis/pseuds/quarter_life_crisis
Summary: In which Grimmjow gets a new neighbour."Jageigakka," Inoue spits with surprising ferocity."Jaegerjaquez," Grimmjow defends, raising his hand in a shielding motion."I don’t care." She speaks the words with the angry discomfort of someone who absolutely does care under normal circumstances, "What did you do to my birdfeeder?""Nothing," he lies. He’s such an asshole.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo, Inoue Orihime/Grimmjow Jaegerjaques, Inoue Orihime/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 80
Kudos: 115





	1. Year 0: Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i just really fucking wanted to post something for grimmichi day. please accept this trembling half-formed fetus as i rip it from my google doc womb before its time 🤲

It’s Christmas Eve and Grimmjow is wasted off his ass trying to pretend that it isn’t. And he’d be pulling it off if not for his neighbour throwing what seems to be the Christmas party of the fucking year. He’s literally never known the guy to have a single friend over in all the years they’ve shared a wall. But clearly tonight the guy is just mister fucking popular, cause roaring laughter is erupting from his apartment every thirty seconds and overplayed holiday classics are blasting loud enough that Grimmjow can not only make out the individual songs, but also every single seasonally-cheerful word. 

Throwing back the remnants of yet another beer, he decides that he isn’t gonna fucking stand - sit? - for this. He lurches out of his chair, and for a moment stands perfectly still, prepared for a particular wave of wooziness. The booze always hits about three times harder upon standing up after resting. This isn’t his first rodeo. 

A loud woop sounds through the thin wall and Grimmjow chucks his empty can at it. It then turns out that he had, in fact, not emptied it all the way. The remaining contents spill out over his laundry rack like something out of a fucking cartoon. He swears loudly, adding the soiled garments to the growing list of his neighbour’s crimes against his person. Ignoring the way his living room is spinning like a Round Up, he stumbles through his apartment, throws open his front door and then slams not only his fist but pretty much his entire body at the door next to his. For emphasis, not for balance. It’s a fairly effective knock, he thinks to himself, but the door still gets a few extra kicks in just to get the message across. Grimmjow is certainly not afraid of kicking down one flimsy wooden door, but he probably needs to start seeing one door instead of two before he can really handle the ramifications of such tempting destruction of property. 

He pulls himself together. Straightens up to his full height and puffs out his chest before rolling his shoulders into a casually threatening slouch. Always best to look like he couldn’t care less about kicking someone’s teeth in. Hand in pocket, head tilted back so he can stare down his nose at whoever opens the door, he is the very picture of intimidation. Even if he does sway just a little.

At least he thinks so until some punk with bright orange hair opens the door, looks him up and down, starting with the fucking jaw tattoo of course, and then says, in the most bored, unimpressed tone,

"What?"

And Grimmjow intends to say some variation of ‘keep it down’ but between the beers and the instant fucking attitude of this guy, what he actually slurs out is,

"Shut the fuck up." 

Still counts as a variation. 

"Huh?" The punk’s voice is aggressively dumb. Grimmjow feels a vein pop somewhere. 

"Wha’, ya deaf? Kaname gotta lil’ meeting goin’ on in there for all the ‘special kids’ or somethin’? Maybe if ya turned the goddamn music down, ya could hear what the fuck I’m sayin’."

A hint of understanding clicks into place on the guy’s stupid face, but it only deepens the furrow in his silly orange eyebrows. Who the fuck bleaches their eyebrows?

"Get off, it’s barely nine o’clock." he complains. It is? Grimmjow drank fast. "What, are we disturbing your beauty sleep? ‘Cause I think that’s a lost cause." 

It’s not the insult, but rather the smirk on the guy’s face that makes Grimmjow see red, surging forward to blindly punch out, even as the hallway’s hideously green linoleum flooring seems to wobble under his feet. The asshole ducks away easily and lugs him square in the nose. And he must be allied with the damn floor, ‘cause it swims up to meet him and suddenly all the Christmas lights above his neighbour’s door fly away from the wire they’d been strung on and start dancing just for Grimmjow. Motherfucker. He rolls onto his front, unsteadily pushing back off of the admittedly enticing ground. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez isn’t about to be beaten by a fucking ginger and a bunch of pretty lights. 

But just when he gets up far enough to see the doorway again, some gigantic freak of nature has emerged from behind the punk and is asking if everything is ‘all right’ in the kind of deep voice that always attaches itself to a mean right hook. 

"Don’t worry, Chad, I got it," says asshole punk and Grimmjow thinks ‘like hell you do’. He tries to say as much, but it sounds incomprehensible even to his own ears. Then his useless fucking arm just up and gives out and he drops back down with a painful scratch of his face against the exact spot where the linoleum has cracked right down to the concrete underneath. He made that crack himself, on the day he moved in, when him and Nakeem dropped his bed hard enough to take one of the legs off. Just typical fucking… floor karma.

"’M rippin’ you off next, y’fuck, firs’ thing in th’mornin’," he mumbles to his arm as footsteps approach from either side. Grimmjow distantly feels himself being hoisted by two people with a clear difference in height. They seem to drag him between them for what feels like years, through something tingly and thicker than water. His socked feet knock against his doorstep heavily as he is heaved through the front door that he apparently hadn’t thought to close. As Grimmjow gets unceremoniously dropped onto his own sticky floor, his brain screams out a curse that is both hilarious and poignant and which he vows to remember in the morning... but as the edges of his vision start to darken, Grimmjow admits to himself that this is unlikely to happen. 

Several nautical miles away, he hears the footsteps pad back out of his apartment. A voice he longs to punch in the dick says,

"Some fucking neighbour she’s gotten herself, huh?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 🍻 happy 15/6


	2. Year 1: Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grimmjow becomes aware that someone new is living next door. He’s not sure this is an improvement. 
> 
> A.K.A. the birdfeeder feud commences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do not be lured into a false sense of security ! i am not a regular updater person in the leastest

Satan is knocking on Grimmjow’s door. He knows this because 1) No one knocks on his door, the guys honk from the parking lot like the uncultured swine they are. 2) Who other than the devil himself could be sadistic enough to interrupt Grimmjow in the midst of the worst hangover he’s ever had. 

This month. 

Worst hangover he’s ever had this month. He’s had some bad ones honestly. But still. 

If only to make the cursed noise stop, he drags his half-dead corpus to the front door, cringing whenever his sock sticks to a dried-up spill. Cringing harder when he accidentally kicks a can that skitters across the floor with all the noise of a three thousand pound church bell. Oh god. What a death toll. 

As Grimmjow reaches the entrance and eyes his work boots, he’s uppercutted by the sudden remembrance that he has work today. There’s just no way that’s happening. He makes a noise, and an outsider might have classified it as pitiful. 

His bosses are his friends - he literally wouldn’t have a job otherwise - but there’s only so far he can keep pushing them. The way his body feels like shriveled up dog shit tells Grimmjow that he’s reaching some kind of limit. He’s a fucking moron and his apartment smells like a barfed-up liquor store and Satan has actually stopped knocking on his door but he can still feel the evil presence trying to stare through the solid piece of wood, so he figures since he’s come this far, whatever. Lifting a shaking hand to his doorknob, he squeezes, turns. 

His eyes instinctively squeeze shut as daylight scorch his retinas. Forcing himself to blink blearily through the onslaught, Satan comes into view. 

It’s young woman. Grimmjow might have classified her as a tall girl scout based on the full container of cookies in her hands and the cheerful innocence bleeding out of her face. However, the truly impressive rack between those two points leaves no doubt that she is in fact a grown woman, even if she keeps ‘em covered up with the most boring sweater in the world. Religious, then, maybe one of those door to door missionaries. One of Kaname’s friends. Probably fucks through a hole in the sheet if she fucks at all. No one enjoying those tits. 

Her face lights up even brighter as their eyes meet. A lock of shiny auburn hair slips behind her shoulder as she looks up at him, catching the winter sun as it does and shining like fire. Through the storm of nausea churning in Grimmjow’s stomach, her cookies do look vaguely delicious. Then her eye falls to his jaw. And that’s enough for him. Her gaze lingers only a second before it flickers back up to his eyes - very polite, her smile stays perfectly put and all Grimmjow wishes for is that she were standing a few inches closer so he can slam his door right on her nose. Holier-than-thou bitch. She opens her glossy mouth to speak, but the door is flung shut in the middle of her chirpy greeting. Nose gets to live another day. 

Grimmjow wonders if he actually emptied out his beer supply last night and will have to crawl to the store today. He hopes not. She seems like the kind of cunt to hang around for a while.

  


* * *

  


It’s snowing. Just as Grimmjow figures winter is right about over and hasn’t bothered bringing a lined glove to work, the temperature drops below freezing. He busts a ceramic cooktop by dropping it fresh out of the packaging like a total idiot, all because his hand had gone fucking numb in the cold. Fuck. That’ll come out of his paycheck. He tries to ask the guys out for drinks - which he really can’t afford on top of the fucking cooktop - just to be nice, to smooth things over. No takers. D was totally about to go for it until Shawlong sent the coldest fucking stare their way and Grimmjow is _fucking_ \- fine. He’s fucking fine and he’s cold and wants to get his ass home anyway. Whatever. 

On his way home he stomps through the thin crust of ice on every puddle he comes across. With a vengeance. Shivering in his leather jacket all the while. He throws himself straight into a hot shower the minute he comes through the door. Then he comes out and it’s snowing. And it’s kinda nice, actually, once he’s inside and warm. 

Grimmjow eats his microwave dinner facing the window instead of the TV for once, using his couch’s armrest as a backrest to watch the sky darken and the fat snowflakes float steadily down. He watches them land on the patch of dead grass he still mentally refers to as ‘the garden’, even though it’s mainly weeds covered by years of all kinds of broken shit he can’t be bothered lugging to the landfill. His old fridge, Edrad’s tire that he blew on the way to pick up Grimmjow that one time. A shelving unit he’d fucked up when he was wasted. But now all of it is covered under a blanket of white, the first and probably last of the season. Fresh and fleeting. Grimmjow decides to smoke outside for the first time in a while.

He’s peacefully contemplating increasingly warmer winters and humanity’s inevitable and well-deserved end in the climate crisis when someone clears their throat like _right fucking next to him_. Grimmjow chokes on his exhale, coughs out smoke. 

"Hello?" a feminine voice says from the other side of the fence. He’s tall enough to peak over the top, but whoever’s on the other side is either too short or too close to the fence to see at his angle. 

"Uh. You talkin’ to me?" he asks after a beat.

"Oh! Yes, mr... Jai..? Ye- aa.? Yeiga-..?"

"Stop trying. You’re not gonna get it."

"Oh." mystery girl deflates, "What am I gonna call you then?"

Grimmjow’s eyebrows shoot up. "Call me? The fuck are you?"

"Me? I’m your neighbour!" Grimmjow’s apparent neighbour chirps, like a cartoon, "Inoue Orihime!"

"Neighbour? What happened to that blind asshole?" Grimmjow asks, taking a bewildered drag on his cigarette. "You his girl or somethin’?" He honestly didn’t think the guy had it in him. 

His neighbour sucks in a breath. "You mean mr. Kaname? The realtor told me he passed way... I’m sorry."

"Don’t be. Never liked the guy." Grimmjow replies sincerely, sending out a series of smoke rings in the weird silence that follows. 

"You’re good at that," says Grimmjow’s neighbour. He’s already forgotten her name.

"Thanks... anyway, uh, goodnight." He chucks the butt of his cigarette into the snow. 

"Wait! I’ve been wanting to ask you something!"

"What?" Grimmjow says, sounding irritable to his own ears when really he just feels thrown off by the whole conversation. He fidgets without a smoke in his hand, even though the girl can’t see him. 

"Would you mind if I hung a birdfeeder from the beam?" A slender hand shoots up from the fence to point at the wooden beam protruding between their apartments, following the line of the fence at the level of the ceiling inside. The beams had been installed so the residents could hang a canopy over their small gardens, but Grimmjow has sure as hell never bothered. 

His first instinct is to say he doesn’t care, but for some reason he instead opts to say that he doesn’t mind. His neighbour is positively elated and tells him to wait while she runs in to fetch the birdfeeder. Grimmjow considers just heading back in, but curiosity gets the better of him. Shoving his hand in his pocket, he shuffles closer to the fence and reaches up on tiptoes to better look over. Candles in dainty candle holders are burning all along the windowsills, lighting up the curtains in warm flickering colours. Grimmjow doesn’t have curtains. The place came with blinds and he’s never changed ‘em. He can see a frilly armchair pulled close to the window, with a throw blanket across the backrest and some sort of knitting resting on the seat. Was that a bowl of potpourri on the windowsill? What kind of creepy, Stepford Wife shit-?

"Fuck, it’s you." Grimmjow states eloquently when his neighbour comes back out with what looks like a miniature Scandinavian cottage. It even has moss on its tiny roof. Jesus. She’s the girl scout woman. Damn, that was a while ago and he hasn’t noticed the name on the mailbox change at all. Awkward. 

"It is," she agrees, smiling uncertainly. 

"I thought you were a missionary."

"Oh. No, I... I just wanted to make a good first impression on my neighbours," she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear in a nervous gesture, as if that were stupid. It kind of was. "Even though I guess I already messed it up. I just thought I was going to be spending all of New Years moving my stuff and then all my friends showed up and moved everything all in one day as a Christmas present. And I was so grateful that I just. Threw them a party. Without checking with the neighbours. Or even saying hello to anyone first," she hides her face in her hands. "I’m really sorry. Did you at least like the cookies?"

"I didn’t get any cookies. I slammed the door in your face." Grimmjow tells her blankly. He can’t tell if she’s being genuine about the whole ‘endearing idiot’ persona. Not that he can’t dislike her either way. Way to humblebrag about what great fucking friends you have. 

"You didn’t?! I left them on your doorstep!"

"Kids probably took ‘em," She seems distraught at the notion. Grimmjow starts digging for earwax, once again wishing for a beer and for the conversation to just end. "Anyway, uh, nice birdhouse... See ya ‘round." He turns away from the fence before she can say anything. Just as he’s closing the door, he hears her ask what to call him. Whatever. At least he doesn’t slam the damn thing this time. 

He checks the name the next time he gets his mail (all bills as always). “Inoue Orihime”.

  


* * *

  


By the time Grimmjow gets home from work the next day, the snow has melted. Dangling from a thin piece of string is the cutesy and overly elaborate bird-cottage. And it bothers him.

At first he can’t put a finger on it. It doesn’t fit in with his more-landfill-than-garden, that’s for sure, but he’s never cared about things _matching_ before. There’s plenty of random shit in there already.

Maybe it’s that it makes him really notice, for the first time in a while, just how much of a dump his place looks like by comparison. Several bags of empty beer cans have been ripped open by birds while waiting for Grimmjow to get around to recycle them (which he will... eventually). His single cigarette butt from the other day shines fresh and orange among the older ones from warmer seasons, faded and brownish and partially hidden in the weeds that have grown up between the tiles. 

Days pass and every time the feeder sways in the wind, Grimmjow becomes more and more aware of how shitty his life must seem to all the birds that come by to eat. "At least I have central heating, you cold, feathered fucks," he tells them one day, when the weather is feeling particularly cuntish. They respond by shitting thick stripes down his fence and all over his old loveseat. He’d somehow forgotten it was still out there in the corner, beige fabric blending in with the withered winter grass, slowly decaying under exposure to the elements. Like everything he dumps outside just ceases to exist whenever he re-enters his apartment. Grimmjow’s “new” couch is leather, one he took over from Edrad when that whore moved in with him. It’s much easier to clean spills from.

  


* * *

  


After a few weeks he realizes what’s really gnawing at him. Beer helps him figure it out. It’s the thought of that ginger bitch, Inoue, looking into his place every time she fills up the fucking feeder. He’s never seen her do it, but it has to happen all the time, ‘cause the birds are there whenever he looks out his window. 

Grimmjow can just picture her, up on some step ladder, judging him with those dumb doe eyes, scrunching up her little nose at his life like she knows half a shit about him. Fuck her. Fuck the stupid chirpy birds and fuck that stupid chirpy woman. 

The room barely spins as he trudges through the kitchen, so he figures he isn’t that drunk. He’s thinking straight all right. As he opens his back door, frigid air blows into his face and sobers him further. It isn’t freezing outside anymore, but the wind still has a bitter bite that makes him shiver. Eyeing the feeder with nothing but fresh air in his way, Grimmjow feels suddenly uneasy. 

Hesitantly, he sneaks out and looks over the fence. 

The lights are off. She isn’t home. 

Curtains aren’t closed, though. Grimmjow can see a flimsy table folded out beside the armchair, upon which rests a large tray full of little compartments, each filled with rich, dark earth and a small healthy seedling. Well, isn’t she just Mother Earth. The walls are covered with cutesy picture frames, all full of the bright faces of Inoue Orihime’s amazing fucking friends. So many different faces smiling the same condescending smile right at Grimmjow and he doesn’t fucking need it. 

He tears down the birdfeeder.

  


* * *

  


Inoue doesn’t come home that night, or maybe she does and just doesn’t notice before Grimmjow leaves for work the next day, feeling uncharacteristically guilty. But she’s clearly waiting for him when he gets home, ‘cause the cunt is knocking on his door not a minute after he pulls it shut. He pulls it back open almost against his will. 

"Jageigakka," Inoue spits with surprising ferocity. 

"Jaegerjaquez," Grimmjow defends, raising his hand in a shielding motion. 

"I don’t care," she says with the angry discomfort of someone who absolutely does care under normal circumstances, "What did you do to my birdfeeder?"

"Uh, nothing," he lies, "Is it gone? Maybe it blew down. That string did look kinda flimsy." He’s such an asshole. 

"Then why isn’t it in my garden or yours? It’s _heavy_. It didn’t fly away." Grimmjow just shrugs, causing Inoue’s face to flush with rage in a way that is somehow both cute and scary. He fucking knew she was snooping into his shit. 

"Birds, man."

"It was a _gift_ , you-! If you didn’t want it there, you could’ve just told me to take it d-"

"It wasn’t me, okay?! Get off my dick, fuck!" He just needs a beer. His fingers are already twitching for something cool to grasp. 

Inoue’s Disney Princess eyes narrow into slits. She turns on her heel and stomps back into her apartment in a flurry of auburn hair and righteous fury. 

Grimmjow stares at the decorative wreath on her door, complete with pine cones and red winter berries, and corrects himself. He needs three beers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _b i r d f e e d e r_


	3. Year 1: Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a feral boi appears (spoiler it isnt grimmjow)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how does that motivational quote go? "aim for grimmjow’s birthday. if you miss, you might hit august 3rd"? yes, yes that's it.

Inoue never puts up a new feeder. The birds don’t seem to care, still flock on and around the fence like total ass-wipes, still shit down his living room window, staring inside accusingly until he shuts his blinds on them. 

Thus winter ends and spring takes its place without any more sightings of Grimmjow’s new neighbour. But he can hear her. He never heard a peep from Kaname, only occasional quiet music, drifting over when it was hot enough for both of them to have their windows open. Always these solemn, creepy-ass hymns that made Grimmjow’s skin crawl. 

Inoue, however. 

He all but catapults out of bed when the first drilling starts. “Motherfucker,” he rasps, cradling his head. He’s so awake. So awfully, reluctantly awake. Turning towards his blinds, he squints the absolute minimal amount. It doesn’t look light outside yet- okay. Time to punch that woman’s fucking face in. He fumbles around for a pair of sweats, but simply bending over makes him want to puke his guts out and he goes very still. Tries to breathe. Opens his eyes more, tries to look at something that doesn’t inspire nausea. His gaze falls on his alarm clock and it is in fact 11:04 AM. Well, shit. Fine. So she’s putting a few pictures up, at a reasonable time of day. She just moved in. That’s normal. 

Grimmjow hobbles to the bathroom to face the inevitable and on the way there, notes that it is dark because heavy storm clouds are forming outside. He wants to take that as a Sign. The drilling keeps going intermittently as he empties the liquid contents of his stomach.

  


* * *

  


The bitch seems to be all but demolishing their building. Never on weekdays, only weekends; basically the only fucking time Grimmjow is home, and hungover as all hell, on principle. Drilling, hammering… sawing? He swears he can hear sanding once or twice, right up against his wall. What the fuck is she doing in there? Manufacturing furniture? She’s clearly not alone about it, seems to have company over constantly. Their building is ancient and so is the landlord; a buzzer has never been installed. He constantly hears Inoue running up and down the hall, letting people in and seeing them out whilst chatting and laughing with all her great fucking friends. Every weekend seems to turn into a dinner party once the sun goes down and the cunts finally put down their tools - conveniently right when Grimmjow is on his way out anyway. 

The guys are less than sympathetic to his troubles. 

“Maybe you should hire her, Yylfordt, sounds like she’s got a better work ethic than this asshole,” Edrad laughs one saturday night, elbowing him in the side. 

“Fuck yeah, Yyl, do it! I’d trade this ugly bastard for a pair o’ tits any day,” D boasts, lifting his beer from the table to be toasted for this brilliant remark. Grimmjow whacks the bottle from below, effectively soaking the little fucker’s face. 

“The disrespect around here, I swear ta God. She’s a stuck up cunt and I am _this_ close to taking that fucking hammer o’ hers and teaching her some goddamn consideration. Maybe I’ll even put the sander to use too.”

“Now that I’d love to see,” Yylfordt chuckles from across the table, “Grimmjow, teaching someone how to be considerate.” Grimmjow scowls, about to speak up, when he feels a boot brush his thigh. “Y’wanna crash on my couch tonight, brother? I honestly can’t have you doing any worse at work, Shawlong’s been grilling me for it after hours.” Well now, there’s an offer. 

“Whaddya need that prick for anyway? Guy wouldn’t know a good time if it fucked him in the ass,” Grimmjow scoffs, knowing full well that Shawlong is the only thing keeping their shoddy business afloat, whipping them all into something vaguely resembling working order. Worst part is how much he respects him for it too. 

The night ends as you would expect, and the following day as well, Yylfordt keeping him occupied well into the afternoon. He doesn’t exactly get more rest than he would’ve at home. Quite the opposite, really, but who’s complaining. 

His bitch of a neighbour is still at it when he comes home, but he finds he can’t even be bothered to get angry on top of the day’s strenuous activities. Instead, he cranks up the volume on his speakers as far as it’ll go without blowing. He’s in the mood for some thrash punk, suddenly. And he suspects he won’t feel like stopping at sunset.

  


* * *

  


The cherry blossoms bloom and Grimmjow is in Tourist Hell. Every year. Every fucking year. Even in Karakura, the damn roaches swarm every spring. “It’s so authentic here!” they gush, crowding into his work commute with overpowering bodyspray and oversized cameras jabbing into his ribs, “Tokyo is too globalized now, _this_ is the _real_ Japan! Don’t you think so?” they ask him in english, because of course they do. 

“Eat a hairy chode.” Grimmjow tells them in japanese. A schoolgirl across the aisle snorts out of her daze, grinning up at him in scandalized approval for a hot second until she takes in his pierced and tatted face and looks away, grin wiped clean off. 

Fucking hell. 

He comes home smelling like five different western countries and heads for the shower when he hears some birds squaking - not the usual ‘for the love of god, fuck me’ call, but rather a desperate noise, a last cry for help. 

Furrowing his brow, Grimmjow turns towards the door to his backyard. Through the open blinds he sees a lean orange cat mangling the absolute shit out of a magpie, azure wing-feathers strewn all about the grass and weeds. The bird quiets, but still twitches lazily. Just the muscles spasming; the thing is clearly dead or almost there. The cat seems to agree and lets go of its prey to sniff at it suspisciously - and the magpie takes off, haphazardly flapping for its life, too terrified to make a peep. The cat wastes no time, hurls itself into nothingness and catches the doomed creature in mid-air. Grimmjow watches the predator tear at the wings of its prey and bite at the feathered neck. 

“You don’t fuck around, do you?” he says absently. 

He takes shower and when he comes out, the cat is still there, feasting on bird guts. Grimmjow walks to the kitchen sink and pours himself a glass of water. Drinks. Pauses. Eyes the window and then takes a bowl out from the cupboard, fills it up with water. 

The cat starts hissing at him as soon as he opens his door, angling itself in front of the bird’s gory remains. 

“Relax, fucker, ’m not interested in that,” Grimmjow scoffs, honestly impressed at the little asshole’s readiness to take him on. “Y’want a beverage with that delicious meal o’ yours?” He sets the bowl down right outside the door, a few feet from the cat. 

Its tongue darts out at the sight of water, but it makes no move towards him, opting instead to glare at him expectantly. Huffing, Grimmjow retreats back inside. The cat watches him as he backs up one step, two, four. Then it darts forward, lapping greedily at the bowl’s cool contents. 

“You’re welcome.”

  


* * *

  


The cat keeps coming back. Grimmjow doesn’t see it every day, but he sees the turds it leaves in his yard, along with the trail of half-eaten corpses. His mission to forcefully introduce his bitch of a neighbour to the revered giants of the death metal genre might be hindering his yard’s attractiveness as a cat hangout. Nevertheless, one by one, the birds still holding out for the reappearance of the birdfeeder are picked off - magpies, warblers, sparrows and wagtails - until word finally gets around that a vicious serial killer is loose in the neighbourhood. Hunter, Grimmjow takes to calling it.

As the days get hotter, he starts getting into the habit of leaving water out for Hunter before leaving for work, regardless of whether the cat is present or not. Despite Nakeem letting Grimmjow crash at his place one friday night, to escape Inoue’s ceaseless weekend renovations, he finds himself heading home before noon to refill Hunter’s water. The bowl is almost always drained when he comes back - until one day, where it’s overflowing. 

Almost three weeks after the initial magpie murder, an unsurprising May downpour hits Karakura. Luckily their current contract consists of indoor work and as they finish up, Edrad lends Grimmjow an umbrella from the trunk of his car; he gets through the whole day relatively dry. This is not the case for Hunter. The cat is absolutely drenched, cowering miserably under the ruins of the broken shelving unit in his yard. Grimmjow is across the apartment in seconds. 

“Get in, you sad bastard.” 

Hunter gets in. Presses warily against the corner where the backyard door meets the wall to the bathroom. Grimmjow heads in to retrieve a towel and then hesitates, doubtful that the cat would accept being scrubbed dry. He ends up just dropping it on the floor in front of Hunter. It sniffs the fabric sceptically before flopping down onto it, kneading slightly with its front paws. Still pitifully soaked. 

Grimmjow curses under his breath and kneels down slowly, offers a hand for Hunter to sniff. He’s gotten to pet him a few times now, but always outside, where the cat had a clear escape route if need be. 

... Yeah, it’s not having it. Hunter takes off down the hall. 

Sighing, Grimmjow goes to his cabinets, rummaging around for something that might appeal to feline taste buds. No cans of the chicken stew left, only beef. Ah well. Surely the cat can go without an avian dinner for one day. 

And look who comes creeping back as he takes his own bowl out of the micro. Gotcha. Grimmjow grabs the towel along with the food and settles onto his couch. 

“Wanna watch _Fury Road_?”

  


* * *

  


Grimmjow can admit to himself that he briefly did fantasize about Hunter sleeping on top of him, but of course that doesn’t actually happen. In fact he doesn’t even know where Hunter finally finds rest, only that the quiet noises of the cat exploring his apartment give him a better night’s sleep than he’s had in a long time. In the morning the rain has stopped, and Hunter has left through the living room window that Grimmjow made sure to leave open.

  


* * *

  


When he gets home from work, Hunter is lounging on the torn loveseat outside. Smirking, he opens the back door, and opens his mouth to-

“Bird Breath?”

Hunter straightens up immediately, ears quirking towards the yard next to Grimmjow’s. Inoue’s yard, Inoue’s voice. She calls out the name a second time and Hunter - _Bird Breath?_ \- leaps onto the fence and down on the other side. 

“Oh! There you are!” she exclaims happily. 

A few sentiments fly through Grimmjow at once. One is disappointment, swooping low through his stomach. Hunter was so good at providing for itself, he’d thoughtlessly assumed that the cat hadn’t belonged to anyone, that it could maybe— the thought is half-formed and quickly replaced by a begrudging _goddamn it, that’s such a stupid and fitting fucking name for that little murderer, why didn’t I think of that._ Both notions, however, are swallowed up by sheer baffled respect. 

“ _That’s_ what the fucking birdhouse was for?!”

Because that’s just _metal as hell_. 

He hears Inoue startle and bang against something metallic, followed by the clangy thump of a metallic something tipping over into the grass. The symphony ends with Hunter- with Bird Breath yowling in indignance.

Looking over the fence, he sees Inoue bent over a table with matching folding chairs, rubbing her knee. One of the chairs lay at her feet. Since he last looked over the fence, her small yard has been filled various young growths, both potted and planted straight into the ground, lined up in newly dug beds, still mostly bare soil. An infant garden. Some of them are flowering, but most aren’t. That probably means they’re used for food somehow. Grimmjow is no botanist.

“Ow. Uh. What?” Inoue slowly straightens up to corner him with her huge brown eyes. The cat is nowhere in sight and Grimmjow feels oddly abandoned in the presence of his neighbour. 

“The bird thing. I didn’t realize you were using it to… “feed” your cat.” She stares at him, eyes narrowing to a squint. Grimmjow fights the urge to silently slink down below the line of the fence and never open his back door again. 

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he barks. 

“Ah sorry, I- actually, no. I’m definitely not,” she appears to say this mostly to herself, “But he’s not mine.” Her eyes widen to a truly impressive size. “Wait, you thought- I was trying to lure in birds for the cat to-?” Inoue snorts. A loud, hugely unladylike snort, that she immediately covers with a hand stained dark brown from digging around in the earth. As she lowers the hand, her face appears to have suddenly grown a five o’ clock shadow of dirt. 

“That would be rather, uh, intense.”

Yes it would. “How’dya know the cat’s name, then?” he persists, plowing through the unwelcome feeling of stupidity. 

“From the posters,” she replies, “you haven’t seen them?” Without really waiting for a reply, she turns on her heel and heads into her apartment, leaving Grimmjow to wonder if he’s the one to get walked out on this time. Almost immediately he hears water running, but any attempt to peer inside is blocked by the windows being taped down with paper. Likely to avoid dust from whatever the hell she’s doing to her place. At Grimmjow’s workplace they use plastic, but of course Mother Earth here can single-handedly save the environment. 

Inoue reemerges with a phone in her now dirt-less hands, tapping into her photos before offering up the device. “You should write down the contact info if you know the cat,” she says as he takes in the slightly shaky image of a poster reading;

**_MISSING CAT_ **

**_\- str0ng bastardcore vibes  
\- responds 2 the name ‘bird breath’  
\- s l e e k  
\- will cut u & ur pet canary if u touch his fluffies_**

**_I LOVE MY FERAL SON PLS BRING HIM HOME_**

Underneath the headline is a picture of the cat formerly known as Hunter, standing proudly before the remains of what looks like a thrush. The contact details include an address to a familiar street. Grimmjow frowns at the screen. 

“Who the fuck writes like this?” he asks, semi-seriously considering the possibility that the cat might have run away on purpose. From someone who refers their fur as “fluffies”. 

“It’s like internet slang, I think,” Inoue supplies helpfully. 

He scowls, giving the image one last look (it’s definitely the same cat, no way around that) before returning the phone. 

“You wanna give it back?” A furrow grows between Inoue’s auburn eyebrows. 

“Well I think we have to! Don’t you?”

Grimmjow shrugs, as flippantly as he can manage. The cat had clearly been doing fine without its original owner. 

“Suit yourself,” he says finally. 

_“It’s not my cat to keep_ ,” Inoue insists, sounding as though maybe she’d also been hoping… whatever. 

“The fuck you think is gonna happen,” Grimmjow mutters as he turns away from the fence, “The damn police knocking in yer door? Fuck me.”

He waits until he’s certain Inoue’s gone back in. Puts a plate of fish sticks outside. Stays in the living room until well after dark, but eventually he has to sleep; has to get up for work before the asscrack of dawn. 

The plate is empty in the morning. It’s probably the closest thing to a goodbye that he’s gonna get.

  


* * *

  


No one wants to go out that weekend. Outside social obligations seem to be the general excuse. With who, Grimmjow wonders. D’s only excuse is that it’s the end of the month and he’s broke as shit. Which is fair. Friday. Saturday night he breaks, sends him a massive bitchfit of a text - a blatant lie about his noisy ass neighbour, when in reality the building is silent as the grave. Maybe Inoue is off renovating the apartments of all her pals this time. He offers to bring a late pizza. Gets a _‘fuck yeh dude’_ immediately and feels downright pitiful about his own sigh of relief. D doesn’t have any beer and doesn’t seem interested either. Grimmjow calls him a pussy. Smiles when D is looking at the TV.

Inoue is back when he gets home the next day. Alone, it seems, but even so, the woman is incapable of being quiet. He’s quickly learned that there isn’t a genre of music that Inoue doesn’t play. She hasn’t blasted her records like he has, but their walls are thin enough that Grimmjow can still hear her singing along every so often. Sometimes she butchers a note so painfully it makes him snort and grin in spite of himself and it is this that he listens for now. 

He’s never been so hyperaware of a neighbour in his life. How did he not notice the woman when she moved in? She definitely hadn’t started any renovation previous to the birdfeeder ordeal. A small part of Grimmjow narcissistically suspects that all the ruckus has in fact been produced to spite him. He shakes it off, of course, tells himself that his neighbour will soon be done with her mysterious projects. 

All the while her damn birdfeeder hides away under the other shit he keeps in his spare room. Occasionally he imagines it as some sort of cursed object, polluting his apartment with thick, heady guilt, like the tell-tale heart, or- was it the same with the portrait of Dorian Grey? Grimmjow has a feeling that the portrait didn’t quite work the same way, that that story was a bit more complicated... He didn’t pay much attention in school. In any case, she’s more than gotten back at him if she’s gone and given that cat away by now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so it’s still pretty downery but i promise next chapter will bring a more positive development
> 
> ps who can guess the identity of bird breath’s owner?


	4. Year 1: Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> broskis, i know these updates are fucking glacial but in my defence there are three months between the beginning of each chapter so im just tryna keep it real here lmao lets go with that

The cat disappears from Grimmjow’s life. So do the renovations next door, it seems. Maybe Inoue finally decided she’d done enough to him. Realistically, he figures the woman is just finally satisfied with her apartment, ready to settle into a hostile peace with Grimmjow as her neighbour. Two weeks of relative quiet pass by - no drilling, no hammering, only muffled chatter from Ms. Social Butterfly and her ever-present gal pals. He no longer has a reason to couch surf at his friends’ places and thank Christ, because he’s bummed off them enough in the past. Grimmjow can finally just be… home. 

Alone. 

He comes to work hungover. More than once. 

Shawlong calls an impromptu meeting one Thursday afternoon and Grimmjow just feels all energy leave his body with one long exhale. He drops his utility knife and fists his hand inside his pocket, digs his nails into the meat of his palm, sharp and grounding, as the guys put down their tools around him. 

“I’m sure you’re wondering what the big news is,” the man states forbearingly as they file into the small kitchen. “but this isn’t an announcement. Rather, a discussion, prompted by one of our crew…” 

Grimmjow resolves to take it calmly. 

“...Roy. Go ahead.”

“Uh, yeah, thanks.” 

D flounders, clearly nervous. Aw, shit. Is this gonna be a fucking intervention? He’s honestly not sure he can handle that. The kid fumbles for words, goes through several loud ‘I’m about to speak!’ intakes of breath. Grimmjow looks around, but no one else is stepping up. No one so much as looks at him. All eyes are on D. 

“So… I, um… I know Yyl was bitc- uh, complaining about our company... kind of stagnating? And I saw this joke on twitter and thought... maybe we could use it?”

“You mean an advertising campaign?” Yylfordt asks. “I suppose we don’t have much of a social media presence. You wanna make an account for us, brother?” No one has so much as glanced towards Grimmjow yet. The tension in his shoulders lets up, ever so slightly. 

“No, more— Okay, so, just picture this on a sign… _“Hot shingles in your area!”_ ”

Silence. 

“Roy, I don’t—”

“Wait! _“... Looking to get laid!”_ Get it?” He splays out his hands to mime the length of a billboard, eyes wide and earnest. 

Grimmjow stares. And laughs. 

“Shit, I think we gotta go into roofing.”

“You’re all barely competent at the renovations we offer as is,” Shawlong protests at the exact same time as Yylfordt leans towards him and says with absolute seriousness, “Shaw, we can’t not use this.”

“Does anyone here even know how to lay shingles?” asks Edrad. Meanwhile, Grimmjow is cracking the fuck up. He feels almost light-headed from relief. 

D looks positively elated. “We could book a workshop to learn! It’ll be like team building or something! Your brother’d pay for that, right, Yyl?”

Everyone quiets at the mention of Szayelaporro. Kid still doesn’t know not to run his fucking mouth. Shawlong speaks up.

“Having this crew of morons climbing around rooftops is the perfect recipe for workplace injury, and I’m not taking any more chances,” he decides coolly, even though the decision really belongs to Yylfordt. “Especially not so long as people keep showing up to work… indisposed.” He says this while looking Grimmjow directly in the eye. There it is. 

Grimmjow scoffs and gives D a single hard pat on the back before trudging outside for a smoke. Meeting a-fucking-journed. 

Friday, he pointedly doesn’t show up hungover. After work, however, he takes grim pleasure in drinking himself into such a state of “indisposedness” that he doesn’t feel human again until Sunday evening. Just to make a point, you know. To who? Who cares. 

This leaves him in relatively fine fighting form for Monday morning, when Inoue wakes Grimmjow up with a crash, and a shout. Then another crash, and… Jesus fucking Christ, is she demolishing the damn place all over again? He squints into the darkness and looks at his alarm clock and it is _4:37 in the morning_. 

The fuck is going on in there? She yells out a slew of curses, some of which are loud enough to make it clearly through the walls and damn, Grimmjow was not expecting a proper lady like Inoue to use words like those. There’s another bang, possibly the sound of furniture being knocked over. Is she being robbed? Kidnapped? He listens, but can only hear one person, clearly a female voice. Again, she yells, wordlessly, a sound of pure anger. A very _loud_ sound, at that. There’s no way Grimmjow is getting more sleep. 

Okay. 

He throws on shorts, foregoes the shirt - even before the sun comes up, the summer heat is approaching the territory of ‘stifling’. 

Grimmjow pounds his fist against her door and _goddamn_ if he hasn’t fantasized about doing this so many times. He hears footsteps approach from the other side, feels a small surge of adrenalin. 

“Get lost!” a muffled voice shouts from within. 

Alright. 

He’s ready. Today is the day Grimmjow gets to knock out Inoue’s perfect shiny teeth. He’ll knock down the walls of her apartment, too, if she still has any left in there after all the clamor she’s been producing these last few months. 

_Months_ , Grimmjow has been putting up with this shit. Fucking _months_. He cracks his knuckles, knows he has only himself to blame. He fully blames the drinking - or rather the aftermath of the drinking - for his lack of action thus far. Vomiting and headaches are not conducive to confrontation, but this bitch should’ve been taught her lesson ages ago. ‘Get lost’? Who the hell does she think she is? At _4 am?_

“Open the hell up,” he growls, pounding harder. He hears a door open behind him, another tenant. Whoever it is stays silent, watching the show.

“I don’t negotiate with terrorists- now back off before I call the cops!”

“The cops?! You entitled little whore, go ahead, see how fast they fucking get here.” He shouldn’t be saying this, not with witnesses. She knows it too. 

“Are you seriously threatening me!?” she yells and, while it’s definitely a woman there, he begins to suspect it isn’t Inoue. The voice is off, somehow. Maybe it’s the blatant rage. “I was ready to leave it at verbal abuse, but you want me to report a threat, keep at it! Let’s see if you can pound down that door, make it three for three with assault, how’d'you like that?!” Another door opens behind him and he knows she’s fucking right. He doesn’t need another assault charge. Grimmjow hesitates, uncertain. 

“That’s what I thought! Now walk on home, buddy boy, maybe I’ll let you off with a noise complaint!” 

With a—

“A fucking noise complaint, you fucking cunt! From you?!”

Oh, he is gonna— it may not be Inoue, but _someone _is gonna lose teeth today.__

__“Can you please quiet down??” asks a voice behind him. He whips around to glare at a pissed off mother and her bleary-eyed toddler, sleepily sucking his thumb on his mother’s hip. Grimmjow tells them both exactly what they can suck on before turning back around, marching back into his own apartment and not stopping there, going all the way through._ _

__“I hope the cops are on their way,” he hollers as he passes through his back door. He knows she can hear him; everyone has their windows open in this heat. “There’s no defense of property when it isn’t your property,” He’s ninety-nine percent sure the woman doesn’t live with Inoue, though her voice sounds somewhat familiar. He should figure that out first, should go back inside, really, but fuck, all he can think of is how best to scale the fence between them. He hears the door open on the other side._ _

__“I really should let law enforcement handle this, but to be quite frank... I’ve been wanting to teach you a lesson,” the woman says ominously. “I promised Orihime I wouldn’t do anything, but I’m sure she can forgive me later.”_ _

__Grimmjow barks out a laugh, incredulous. “Who the fuck d’you think you are?”_ _

__“Why don’t you come and see.”_ _

__Oh, yes ma’am. He utilizes the corner where house meets fence; one kick to the fence, one to the house, a hand on top of the planks for leverage and then he’s over, officially trespassing on someone else’s property._ _

__His opponent is a mean-looking dark-haired woman, the same age as Inoue, but shorter and skinnier, practically drowning in an oversized sweatshirt. In one smooth motion, she throws off the garment and stands before him only in a sports bra and gym shorts, dropping into a low fighting stance, one arm outstretched, open palm pointed directly at him. The other arm… in a cast._ _

__Grimmjow’s stomach drops and his jaw clenches in frustration. The fuck is he supposed to prove to someone with a broken arm? He hadn’t even noticed that she only filled out one sleeve of the sweatshirt, but supposes that’s only natural considering that he fills his own shirts in the same way._ _

__She’s staring at him, her own fighting spirit also seemingly dissipated. Hasn’t gotten out of her stance, though._ _

__“You don’t have an arm.”_ _

__Grimmjow looks down at his arm._ _

__“Uh, yeah I do, dipshit. I just don’t have two like the rest of you greedy fuckers.” A coward might have said this makes him equal with cast girl, but spending most of his life accustomed to having one less limb than the general population does not equal recently injuring a body part that one uses constantly._ _

__His disposition is confirmed when the woman finally slumps out of her stance to ask in a rough voice,_ _

__“How do you do it.”_ _

__Her eyes are thankfully dry, but they burn with the quiet intensity of someone who fiercely wants to learn, because they know they’ll break if they don’t. Grimmjow can relate. Jesus this encounter took a fucking turn, though._ _

__“You figure it out, over time. Lotta permanent damage?” He nods towards the cast. She bites her lip, shakes her head._ _

__“It’s only— I feel so fucking useless. I— God, I can’t do anything. I’ve broken it before, but that was when I still lived at home.. I was just a big kid then and it wasn’t weird for my parents to take care of me. Now, at the hospital… I asked the doctors what to do and they just said ‘get someone to help you for a few months’— just ‘get help’?!”_ _

__She pauses as the logical solution floats between them, looks at him in defiance as if he’s about to go ‘can’t your folks help you again?’. Grimmjow isn’t a fucking moron, knows shit’s more complicated than that. Would personally rather bite off his tongue than ‘get help’. Doesn’t give two fucks about a parental sob story either._ _

__“Orihime said I could stay, of course, but I don’t— I smashed three plates trying to do the dishes! How do you even butter bread without it sliding around? How the fuck do you stir things? The pot just fucking rotates!”_ _

__“Why the hell are you doing dishes and shit at four in the morning?”_ _

__She swipes a hand through unruly hair. “Orihime works at the bakery, she got up at like three.” The hand slides down to cover her face, rubbing at tired eyes. She mumbles, “I got up with her so she could put on my bra.”_ _

__He doesn’t know how to reply to that. Goes the easy route, “So, how many of those plates diddya smash on purpose?”_ _

__She snorts and simply nods at him ruefully. Grimmjow frowns deeply at how the fight just went right outta this chick. He digs into the pocket of his shorts, but of course he didn’t think to put his pack there before going on a rampage. Would’ve offered one to the girl, even._ _

__“I got some shit you can use,” he says instead, before the silence gets awkward. The woman looks at him with surprise, morphing into solemn, unstated gratitude. It’s a decent feeling, all right. He’s pleased she doesn’t voice it._ _

__And then it does get awkward, because how exactly is he gonna go and get the stuff now?_ _

__“You’re not putting one foot inside Orihime’s apartment, home invader,” she tells him dryly, reading his thoughts._ _

__“Fucking bitch,” Grimmjow grumbles, “Meet me in the hall, then.”_ _

__She’s clearly in no hurry, cocking a challenging eyebrow at him and looking pointedly between him and the fence. He practically has to shoo her away and even his menacing snarl only produces a scoff and a turned heel paired with rolling eyes._ _

__Only once the woman has walked several steps back into the flat does he attempt to leap the fence. He manages on the first try and is disproportionately relieved._ _

__Grimmjow’s spare room is anything but sparse; cardboard boxes, plastic crates and honest piles of loose shit are piled onto each other to the height of his chest, obliterating any floorspace for the guest futon - not that he’s ever needed it during the years he’s had the place anyway. The crafting table is entirely buried, the chair a vague shape underneath a mound of dirty clothing that should’ve gone in the laundry bin. Still, it’s only ordered chaos and he finds the box he’s looking for quite quickly. Doesn’t need to check the contents, trusts his memory._ _

__With the box balanced on his hip, he pads back out into the hallway. This time, only the dark-haired woman is waiting for him. The other nosey fuckers will have to go without any show today. He notes that she’s regained the oversized sweatshirt, one sleeve clearly hanging limp and empty._ _

__“Spike board. Non-slip mat. Pan handle holder. Spreading board. There should be a splayd for two in there if you need ‘em.”_ _

__“What the hell is a splayd?”_ _

__“Combined spoon-fork-knife. Some people call them sporves,” he says wryly._ _

__She laughs a little, gives him a nod and then moves closer to transfer the box to her own hip. She smells like sweat - distinctly female sweat and Grimmjow is abruptly reminded of how long it’s been since he was this close to a woman._ _

__“Don’t you need this stuff?”_ _

__“Wouldn’t go lending it out if I did. That’s my old setup. Just have the patron saint of home improvement bring it back when you’re done using it.”_ _

__“She’s good, you know. Orihime. You’d like her if you knew her.”_ _

__“Why, because everyone else does?”_ _

__The woman rolls her eyes again, sighs as if he isn’t worth her time, and then. Just kind of keeps standing there. Even with the box in her possession, she looks fucking lost._ _

__Grimmjow groans._ _

__“Want me to show you how it works?”_ _

__She hesitates, and Grimmjow gets it completely. Would’ve done the same. But this isn’t help; this is just instruction._ _

__The woman comes to the same conclusion and steps toward his apartment. Oh, Right. Fucking figures. Grimmjow hesitates, tempting to insist that she let him instruct her inside Inoue’s place, but knows that isn’t gonna happen. Shit. Shit. It’s not like it’s complicated stuff, but…_ _

__Grimmjow begrudgingly opens his front door and lets Inoue’s friend into his flat. He walks briskly past the open parallel doors of the twin warzones known as the bedroom and spare room. Hopes to hell that she doesn’t linger, doesn’t pry. With every step, he’s hyperaware of how badly his floor needs sweeping. Or vacuuming. A powerwash, ideally. All the crumbs and tiny bits of rubbish that are normally a natural part of his habitat suddenly feel huge and offensive to the pads of his feet. He finds himself just waiting for the woman to get her foot stuck in some sticky old spill and call out in disgust._ _

__She only follows him silently._ _

__“What’s yer name anyway,” he asks, mostly to distract himself from the discomfort of having his space consensually invaded with no notice._ _

__“Arisawa,” she replies, “and you’re-”_ _

__“Jaegerjaquez.”_ _

__Arisawa repeats his name impressively well, explaining that she works with a lot of internationals. Fancy. They reach his kitchen and he’s immensely happy that he was nauseous enough to clear away all the empty beer cans and air out the room yesterday. There are stains from previous cooking attempts all along the walls that he swears he never even noticed before._ _

__He gestures quickly towards his food station, drawing all attention to one spot._ _

__“So, this is my current setup. Combined spike/spreader board.” He looks around for something to spike. Opens the fridge, silently daring Arisawa to comment on the fact that it almost exclusively contains beverages. Again she says nothing, honestly starting to irk him. He finds a slightly shrivelled orange, and after a beat he also grabs some butter, eggs and bacon. Reads the expiration date on the bacon. Awkwardly puts it back, making a mental note to throw it out later._ _

__“The spikes come up if I push this button, but the old board just has the spikes up permanently. Then uh… yeah you pretty much just spike things.” He presses the orange down onto the spikes._ _

__“Then shit doesn’t roll away when you wanna cut it.” He cuts the orange into slices for demonstration._ _

__“You can spike bread, too.” Grimmjow spikes a loaf of bread. He wants to die. “Kinda fucks with the underside, but y’know uh…”_ _

__“Such is life,” Arisawa provides, staring at the bread, sparing him the horrible eye contact. He cuts the bread into slices. Too many slices._ _

__“Yeah.” The slices of bread come away slightly soggy from the orange juice pooling around the spikes. Seeing no other option but to push onwards, Grimmjow presses the spikes down and flips up the spreading frame. He shows her how the frame keeps the slices from sliding around. He shows it by buttering all of them._ _

__“That’s my pan handle holder over there. The old one looks a little different, but same principle. Suction cups.” He points at the suction cups. Curling his toes at Arisawa’s silence, he feels necessitated to dig out a pan and place the handle within the confines of the handle holder. At the continued lack of response, he turns on the burner underneath the pan. He doesn’t know why anymore. This has turned into absurdist performance art._ _

__“Uhm. I crack eggs like this,” Grimmjow announces before cracking an egg against the pan, one-handed, as everything he does in life. “You might get some on your hand but y’know… you just wash it.”_ _

__Arisawa finally cracks, just like an egg, the complete pointlessness of that statement doing her in. After a beat, so does Grimmjow._ _

__“You should offer classes,” she chortles. “I get it on my hands even when I use both, you know.”_ _

__“Fair,” Grimmjow says for lack of a better reply, grinning helplessly. He’s trying to stop, honest, but one side of his mouth keeps pulling upwards. They share a look. “You want eggs? I mean I’m already doing it.”_ _

__“Sure,” she laughs._ _

__It ends up being the healthiest breakfast he’s had in a very long time. Which is to say, it consists of both food and coffee rather than just coffee. Two eggs each, buttered bread, a plate of shared orange slices (Arisawa eats most of those). A feast, really._ _

__“This is what I wanted from the damn doctors,” Arisawa bitches around a mouthful of bread. “They were just like, ‘Mobility equipment? You broke an arm, not a leg. You don’t need crutches or a wheelchair’!”_ _

__Grimmjow snarls. “Doctors are all assholes.” For some reason this makes her laugh._ _

__“You don’t know the half of it,” she says, in a weirdly smug tone, as if referring to some big joke he isn’t in on. He frowns._ _

__“Anyway… I gotta get going to work.” It’s not a lie; the sun had yet to rise when Arisawa woke him and now golden light is creeping down his walls._ _

__Grimmjow rises from the couch, intending to track down his work pants, and then hesitates, wonders if she needs to see how to put on pants one-handed. He really doesn’t feel like demonstrating that. Instead, he writes down the name of a one-armed content creator with helpful how-to videos and slaps it onto the table. Already dreading the impending gush of sweat, he grabs a thin hoodie off the back of the couch. Today’s work entails stripping out old insulation and Grimmjow is not planning on spending the next week itching his arm off, hellish summer weather be damned._ _

__“Use the inverted corners for shit that zips,” he explains, hanging the hoodie off his shoulder and pressing his stomach against just such a corner, trapping the end of the zipper between stomach and wall. “It looks dumb as hell but it works. That’s why I picked this place. Inverted corners everywhere.”_ _

__Arisawa is staring at him like he just showed her how to perceive a new wavelength of light._ _

__“I mean, assuming Bob the Builder in there still has any walls left.”_ _

__“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she smirks._ _

__Grimmjow scoffs. “Okay, mealtime is over. Get outta here.”_ _

__She gets up, grabbing the box on her way. “Thank you,” she says, a little too sincerely for them both. Before he can reply, she turns towards the entry and heads out._ _

__“Have fun with your crip kit,” he calls after her and she ducks her head with a snort. Grimmjow feels certain she’d be flipping him off if she had a hand to spare._ _

  


____

* * *

____

  


__After a solid half year of presumably buying at least some of their groceries in the same little supermarket at the corner of their street, Grimmjow and Inoue’s eyes meet across the aisles for the first time. It’s just his fucking luck honestly, less than a week after almost breaking into her flat. He’s coming from Boxed Dinners and Pasta, heading towards the check out. She’s coming from Baking, heading… oh shit. Also towards the check out. He’s not even going directly there - intends to stop by Beer and Wine for some not-wine on the way, but fuck. She’s already heading towards him._ _

__“Hey! I’d been hoping to run into you!” she says brightly, as if they haven’t tried to sonar-blast eachother out of the building using power drills and death metal respectively._ _

__“I wanted to say thanks for what you did for Tatsuki. Like, big thanks. Huge. That meant so much for her.”_ _

__Grimmjow grimaces. “Why’re you saying thanks for someone else?” They’ve reached the check out line now. There’s only one. They’re in it together._ _

__“Because it means a lot to me that my friend is happy! She was so crushed to have gotten injured just before the JKA Championship. I didn’t know how to cheer her up at all, but she got some of her spark back after you gave her that mobility stuff and she could at least cook again.”_ _

__“Loaned. I didn’t _give_ her anything,” Grimmjow frowns, looking around for an employee to open another register. No such luck. _ _

__“Well, it was very kind of you,” Inoue insists and he rolls his eyes disgustedly. “And I get the benefit of her cooking now, so thanks from me too.”_ _

__“Don’t mention it.”_ _

__The brief conversation dies with him and luckily the people in the front of the line aren’t buying much. Soon Grimmjow is stepping up to the short conveyor belt and placing his items onto it as quickly as possible, which is still not very fast considering the thing moves about an inch per minute._ _

__He pays and tries to bag his items as quickly as he can, in no mood to be accompanied back to their building by Lady Wholesome. His items are mainly cans however - not the alcoholic kind, the store just has a really good sale on Campbell’s this week - and one of them inevitably rolls away from him, clunking onto the floor. Inoue has finished paying by the time he retrieves it._ _

__“Oh,” she says dumbly, staring at his two very full bags of heavy metal cans. “Let me take one of those!” She doesn’t even wait for a reply before reaching out and Grimmjow slaps her hand away indignantly._ _

__“Fuck off.”_ _

“But I…” _...have two arms and one bag. You have one arm and two bags._

__Grimmjow groans in contempt and grabs his two bags with enough vigour to almost snap the flimsy plastic handles._ _

__“Wait!” she calls out as he pushes past the other shoppers. She comes up beside him almost as soon as he exits the store._ _

__“I’m sorry, I just never noticed— I mean, I just wanted to do something in return, for Tatsuki.”_ _

__Fucking stupid. Grimmjow speeds up, puts his long legs to use._ _

__“I saw Bird Breath the other day,” she announces from behind him, and then uses his brief hesitation to stride up to his side again._ _

__“He’s graduated to crows now. I left water out for him, but he only stopped by the one time. Maybe he’s learned the way home now and just wanted to say hi. Did he stop by your place too?”_ _

__“Didn’t see him.” Within the safety of his own head, Grimmjow is absolutely devastated that he wasn’t home to greet the cat. He’s certain it visited his yard if it went to see fucking Inoue._ _

__“What was the owner like?” That’s not a possessive question. He’s gracing Inoue with his civilized conversational skills._ _

__Inoue frowns, searches for words to describe the author of that bizarre ‘missing’ poster. “She was—”_ _

__“Why, hello, miss Inoue!”_ _

__The voice belongs to a man close to retirement age, slightly hunched over and looking like every other boring old dude in the country. He’s coming from the direction of their building and Inoue waves at him enthusiastically._ _

__“Mister Ono, hello! Did you have a good trip? How was your mother?”_ _

__“Oh, not very good I’m afraid… The doctors will be surprised if she makes it into the new year,” he says this with the shrug of someone who probably didn’t expect a parent to live so long in the first place._ _

__“I’m so sorry to hear that!” Inoue wails, completely sincerely._ _

__“You’re too kind, miss, but such is life - it doesn’t last forever,” the man waves her off, lifting his balding head to stare at Grimmjow with obvious disapproval. “And who is this young man accompanying you?”_ _

__“My other neighbour! This is mister…” Grimmjow relishes the brief look of panic on Inoue’s face. He remains unhelpfully, expectantly silent. “... Jakkijeigasu… he lives on the opposite side of me.”_ _

__“Ah… I don’t believe I’ve seen him before. Please be careful, miss, you never know with these types,” the man says suspiciously to Orihime. Grimmjow is entirely unsurprised that this prick doesn’t think he can understand japanese._ _

__”In any case, I must be going. If you have any more renovating to do, I’ll be visiting Mother again next weekend. I must say, I’m getting very curious, though I’ve yet to hear a peep of a process. You will show me the results one day, won’t you? Good afternoon!”_ _

__Inoue looks as if someone just spilled a hot beverage in her lap. “Ah— of course, mister Ono, have a good afternoon! A-and thank you for letting me know!” The man tips his hat and strolls off, leaving them both standing perfectly still._ _

__“You’ve checked with him every time, haven’t you?”_ _

__She looks like she wants the ground to split apart underneath her and swallow her alive._ _

__“I don’t— We have a good relationship, it just comes up in conversation—”_ _

__“Bullshit. You showed up on his doorstep with a freshly baked apple pie and begged him to let you know when you would be the least possible disturbance.”_ _

__Her pained expression is doing little to deny his claim._ _

__“Bet you’ve even baked him shit just for telling you when you wouldn’t bother him. You’re fucking God’s gift to mankind, aren’t you? Cooking for your kindly neighbours, putting up your friends in need, taking care of the poor strays… Bet you’re fucking allergic to the thought of someone not wishing they could be as pure as you. And inside you’re actually just—”_ _

__“You started it!”_ _

__Her expression says she doesn’t know what to do with herself after that outburst, but her stance is all power. Stretched up to her full height, chest puffed out, legs spread a shoulder-width apart. Grimmjow finds he likes her much better this way._ _

__“That bird feeder was from Tatsuki, she lugged it all the way over here after competing in Sweden! It was a housewarming gift!”_ _

__“... Housewarming gift, huh.”_ _

__The spell is broken. She slumps back down, scratches at her neck. “I’m sorry… Kurosaki keeps telling me to stand up for myself, but that doesn’t mean I have to hold a grudge. Honestly I was angry with you, but I’ve been a bad neighbour too, and. Helping Bird Breath and Tatsuki… I’m sure you’re a decent guy, Jakka— agh.”_ _

__What the fuck is he supposed to do with this. Say it back? Who the hell just says shit like that in real life. Is she fucking with him?_ _

__“Jaegerjaquez.” Seems like a safe response._ _

__“Thank you… Do you think we could just start over?”_ _

__“I don’t even know you,” Grimmjow scowls, “There’s nothing to start over.”_ _

__“Good!” Inoue smiles, as if he just gave her exactly what she wanted. Crazy bitch._ _

  


____

* * *

____

  


__He learns to tell their voices apart within about a week of Arisawa’s stay. It’s not hard, seeing as they spend most of their time in the garden and he can hear them as if they were inside his own fucking flat._ _

__She’s... funny. They both are._ _

__They play a lot of weird ass games outside. Something with rules that sound like tennis, except scaled down for the tiny garden, to the point that they’re apparently using spoons instead of rackets. Grimmjow wonders what they use for a ball. They also play something by the name of “Arisawa Skittles”, in which the rules are clearly made up on the go. It involves the noises of lots of wooden things hitting each other, paired with wails of disappointment and whoops of victory. He finds himself listening in, starting to recognize some of the names of their friends when they come up in their conversations._ _

__Throughout all the games, Inoue remains loudly insistent that she keep one arm tied to her back for the sake of being fair, and Grimmjow wants to fucking smack her. Arisawa has had weeks to adapt at this point. Give the woman some damn credit._ _

__One Saturday afternoon, they kick a ball into his yard. Initially he thinks it must have come from some kids, being small and brightly decorated with the characters of a childrens’ show, but sure enough, the ball is the property of a grown woman._ _

__“Oh, shit. Yo, Jaegerjaquez, you in?” Arisawa calls over the fence._ _

__“‘M here,” Grimmjow calls back from where he's standing in his kitchen, refilling his ice tray. He shuffles out the open back door to see a tanned face looking over the top of the fence._ _

__“Don’t tell me you’re standing on her.”_ _

__“Nah, people walk all over Orihime enough already.”_ _

__“They do not!” Inoue’s voice pipes up from elsewhere beyond the fence. Their ball is resting comfortably upon the old loveseat. Grimmjow sends it flying over Arisawa’s head in a high but short arch, mindful not to throw it further than the bounds of Inoue’s small garden._ _

__“Good throw!” Arisawa says, ducking back down. “... But can you handle this one!?”_ _

__Grimmjow had already turned his back to retreat from the baking sun, and the ball just narrowly misses his ear. He lets out a curse before flinging it back where it came from, to the apparent delight of Arisawa and Inoue. A game of something akin to volleyball ensues, except neither side has any idea where on the fence the ball will come from next._ _

__Eventually Grimmjow inevitably eats shit, tripping over an old tire and landing gracelessly on a bag of empty cans in an attempt to hit the stupid ball. The result is loud and slightly embarrassing._ _

__“You okay over there?” Inoue exclaims, and he sees a glimpse of her auburn hair as she jumps on the spot to peer above the fence. He grunts out that he’s fine, wants her to stop trying to look._ _

__“It’s not really fair though,” his neighbour insists, “We’re three arms against one, you know? Tatsu, maybe you should make a team with Grimmjow instead.”_ _

__“In your fucking dreams is that fair,” Grimmjow retorts, grunting with effort as he yeets the ball over the fence. Unsurprisingly, it flies too far._ _

__“Noo!” Inoue’s voice cries out, slightly more distant than before. “Ah-! Mister Ono, are you home? Sorry to bother you, I’m afraid we lost our ball…”_ _

__“Kiss ass,” Grimmjow declares loudly, causing Arisawa to laugh. It’s a good day for him._ _

__It turns into a decent summer, too. The bars are always more lively once the students finish their semester and Grimmjow is not yet too old to be taken back to some college slut’s dorm room. They love using him for their rebellious phase. He loves being used, as long as he gets out before they wake up. The guys are more easily persuaded to drink as well, won over by the breezy warm summer nights. He even hears Arisawa and Inoue some evenings, giggling over a bottle of wine in the garden._ _

  


____

* * *

____

  


__A week before he firmly enters the territory of ‘late twenties’, Grimmjow hears Inoue wailing outside when he gets home from work. Without really thinking, he says,_ _

__“Go easy on her, Arisawa.”_ _

__But the lack of response reminds him that of course, despite subjecting him to their chatter all the time, Grimmjow isn’t anything to them. He’s about to close his window - for his own sake, he supposes - when Inoue speaks up._ _

__“Tatsuki went home,” she informs him, clearly sad about it._ _

__Grimmjow finds himself reciprocating the feeling. Arisawa played some good music while Inoue was at work. He handed her a beer over the fence one time while they talked about Sid Vicious._ _

__“Her arm healed enough that they could give her a shorter cast, so she didn’t need any help anymore. I think she thought she was being a burden, but… I’d really gotten used to having her here.” Inoue kind of laughs at herself. “I know it’s not like I won’t still see her all the time, I just... When we were kids, we always talked about being roommates someday, and then we never got around to it, you know?”_ _

__“I’ve lived with mates. Drove eachother up the fucking wall.”_ _

__“Maybe.”_ _

__Grimmjow had almost forgotten how fucking awkward it was to speak with Inoue without her friend there._ _

__“What were ya whining about out here then?”_ _

__“Oh,” Inoue frowns audibly. “My poor little plum.”_ _

__He steps up to the fence to peer over the edge. Inoue’s face is right there, much closer than he expected and much more tan than when he last saw her. The summer sun has put freckles all over her nose and lightened her hair to an even more fiery shade. She’s almost as orange as Bird Breath._ _

__Her eyes look warmer in this weather, too._ _

__“Which one’s the plum.”_ _

__She stares at him blankly for a moment before the question gets through, then immediately pulls away to point at a leafy stick in a pot. A significantly larger stick lays on the ground before the pot._ _

__“Plum Tree just had her first pruning,” she says, gently caressing the potted stick. Grimmjow now has an idea of why Arisawa got out of there when she could._ _

__“I don’t know what that means.”_ _

__“It’s so she can bear fruit sooner. It goes a lot faster if she can just focus her energy on developing plums rather than maintaining a big trunk that she doesn’t need. That’s what I tell myself, at least, but it seems so brutal now! The internet said I had to cut two thirds off her, look how tiny she is now!”_ _

__“A short stick,” Grimmjow agrees._ _

__“I bought a bag of plums the first weekend after I moved in,” Inoue tells him, still staring dreamily at her infant tree. “She’s half a year old now, my baby. I thought it’d be so cool to have a tree as old as my time in this place. How long have you lived here?”_ _

__Grimmjow thinks about it for a minute. “Four years, I guess.”_ _

__“Wow, your tree could be bearing fruit already!”_ _

__He sinks down from his tip toes and turns around to face his landfill yard. One of the loveseat’s cushions have split apart from exposure to the elements and the inside is looking decidedly moldy. “Nah, I don’t think so.”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so the fic finally has a higher wordcount than the fic outline document ☠️
> 
> EDIT: moth drew [ grimm & tatsu](https://iili.io/25kiPa.jpg) 🥺🥺🥺


	5. Year 1: Autumn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Grimmjow learns what nutmeg is, and many other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is provided to you by glühwein (please sponsor me lmfao)

Grimmjow has never had a relationship with any neighbours during years he’s owned his flat. In fact, he’s pretty confident he wouldn’t be able to recognize any of the building’s inhabitants in a lineup. Except Inoue. Sometimes they check their mail at the same time, and she never fails to smile and greet him when they do. They don’t exactly have much to talk about, but it’s not unpleasant. She seems to know everyone in the building, greets them by name when they pass by in the hall. Grimmjow she addresses simply as ‘neighbour’. He alone gets this title, and from her lips it sounds like an endearment, but he knows it’s only because she still can’t pronounce his damn name. 

One evening she knocks on his door, asking to borrow some nutmeg. He’s not expecting the person knocking to be Inoue and almost has a seizure trying to ‘subtly’ kick a pair of worn boxers out of the hallway and into his bedroom where they belong. Grimmjow has no idea why she would think he owns nutmeg to begin with. He’s not even… quite certain what nutmeg is, but pictures something similar to nutella. 

He offers her peanut butter instead. Apparently that doesn’t work as a replacement. 

The next time he shops for groceries, he keeps an eye out for nutmeg, but it doesn’t appear in any of the aisles he frequents. He buys a small jar of nutella instead, although he empties it before Inoue ever comes knocking again. Shit was tasty. He also makes up his mind to keep the floors clear of dirty laundry, in case of any future visits, but that resolution doesn’t even last as long as the nutella. 

Just as he’s finishing up the jar, Bird Breath comes for a visit. Grimmjow tries to play it cool. 

“Hey, y’want some nutmeg, too?” 

The cat is totally playing it cool as hell and pointedly ignores the open back door in favour of suspiciously sniffing the dried up remains of all the turds it left behind in spring. 

“All yours, buddy, ain’t no one else here with the nerve to shit all over my lawn. What, has the guilt been tearing you up this whole time? Feel free to clean up after your damn self.” 

Is this how a sane person talks to animals? Likely not. The cat finishes its round of shit-smelling and approaches his door slowly, grandly, as if bestowing a royal blessing upon him. Grimmjow is absolutely blessed. He makes no move to get up from the couch, but as Bird Breath continues showing no interest in actually entering his home, he carefully lowers the near-empty jar to the floor. A single sleek ear twitches with interest. 

He reaches down and nudges the jar. Away from the door, not towards it. Silently - gleefully - he watches as Bird Breath pads towards the container of nutty goodness. He dangles his arm off the back of the couch and manages to brush an orange tail as it passes by. Idly, he wonders if nutella is harmful for cats. Is there something about...a chocolate allergy? He purses his lips as Bird Breath licks at the jar, but tells himself that a feline so smart and in touch with its instincts will know if something is harmful. It’s pretty much bullshit, but luckily the cat doesn’t turn out to be a huge nutella-lover, and soon takes to cautiously exploring the various smells of his flat. There are a lot to choose from. Grimmjow stays in his seat, blatantly admiring his visitor. Bird Breath’s fur is short enough for the cat’s strong muscles to ripple visibly as the predator stalks through once-familiar territory. It stops several times to sniff at various items of dirty clothing that Grimmjow never threw in the laundry afterall, because he is a despicable human being. 

A chirp outside distracts the cat from its current task; it sets it upon another mission entirely. Grimmjow turns his head to spot the doomed target, feeling a grim sense of second-hand anticipation. It’s a skittish brambling, perching on the old tire. Only a small snack, and probably an easy one. He settles in to watch the show, leaving his hand to dangle and hoping to get just one more stroke of Bird Breath’s orange fur before the murdering bastard leaves for the hunt. No such luck. The cat is all the way over by his laundry rack, coming nowhere near him as it makes a beeline for the door, tail flicking from side to side with deadly excitement.

Then, suddenly, his phone goes off. Only a text, but still blaringly loud enough to make the brambling to fly away entirely. Bird Breath gives him a look that almost makes him think he’s next on the menu. 

“Sorry,” Grimmjow says, actually meaning it for once. “I have hot dogs in the freezer?”

But the seasoned killer is already leaving for new victims - or possibly just out of spite, because of course the fucker jumps the fence to _Inoue’s_ garden. She probably keeps actual cat food on hand, in little hand-painted tin somewhere. 

Grimmjow sighs and fishes the stupid phone out of his pocket. 

_‘Come to the office after work tomorrow. We need to talk.’_

Wow. Great.

  


* * *

  


It’s been a while since Grimmjow was in Shawlong’s office. Especially without the other guys there. He appreciates the man’s subtlety, his attempt to leave the others out of whatever the fuck is about to go down, but Grimmjow did not need a warning that far in advance. He’s had the worst fucking work day in weeks and he’s stone cold sober. Grimmjow squeezes his fist tighter, feels the too-tight bandage throb where he nicked himself with a woodcutter whilst imagining all the ways in which Shawlong might fire him. 

“I had a visitor yesterday,” his boss says meaningfully, shutting the door behind him with a quiet click.

His office is fairly large for their type of company, only slightly smaller than Grimmjow’s own bedroom. Having all that space to himself sounds like fancy working conditions, but in fact the room is mostly storage for leftover building materials and for a comprehensive array of specialized tools that they usually just bought for one job and then haven’t needed again. “Yet”. Shaw refuses to get rid of company property. Filing cabinets take up the remainder of the space - double copies of orders, bills, receipts, tax forms. His slim desk looks like it's suffering a constant claustrophobic attack. Grimmjow waits impatiently for him to just get on with it.

“Your mother, Jaegerjaquez.” 

Shaw’s voice is calm, even as he drops the floor out from under Grimmjow and plunges him into the icy depths of his own mind. “She was waiting here when I got back from the site.”

“... She here?” Grimmjow asks tightly, refusing to look around, eyes perfectly trained on Shawlong. He imagines her flying at him from the corner with a bucket full of his own guilt and regret. 

“Now? No, no. She only wanted to know if you still work here. I told her that you do.” The man’s eyes flash at him in the late afternoon light. “For now. If you keep up the injuries, then I’m not sure it will be morally responsible of me to keep you on.”

“Jesus, Shawlong, I’m not sawing off my fucking foot or anything. It’s physical labour, sometimes you fuck up.” Especially when your boss sends you ominous texts and lets you wait all fucking day with your nerves all frayed to shit. 

He looks away with what he hopes is detached irritation, when in fact he can’t help but do a short survey of the office, checking that his middle-aged mother really isn’t hiding behind the stack of laminate flooring. “If you’re looking for a reason to fire me then don’t try to pass it off as fucking _moral responsibility_.”

“You’re not fooling anyone. I hope you realize that. We smell it on you.”

“There’s no ‘we’, don’t you fucking make it ‘we’,” Grimmjow snarls, “Who’s trying to fool someone, huh? If I’m not making _you_ enough money then man the fuck up and say it to my goddamn face.”

“Money has nothing to do with it, as you well know. Don’t play dumb here.” Shawlong takes a step closer, lowers his tone, “I’m not after you to be a prick, Grimmjow. I’m worried.”

“Cut the bullshit,” he all but spits, hand shaking with something he decides is rage. He wants to fucking _leave_ , but he’s not sure the job will come with him if he goes now. 

“Call your mom,” Shawlong retorts, calm and firm and Grimmjow groans out loud. 

“Who the hell do you think you are, huh? My new dad? S’that why she was coming around here? For a little—” 

“I’m not your father. Give him a call too while you’re at it.”

“Get the fuck outta my business. Fucking fire me or leave me alone.” He turns away from Shaw, from the shit coming out of his own mouth, and paces towards the door, mind still racing for something to say, even if it’s petty. Wants to take a swing at Shaw’s nose. Wants to have money for food next month. 

“It becomes my business when it shows up at this office. This isn’t the place someone should go for news on their son. That’s all I’m saying. I won’t keep you any longer.”

At the sight of Grimmjow’s expression, he clarifies; “See you tomorrow, Jeagerjaquez.”

He processes the sentence only once he’s left the building and concludes it means that he’s still expected at work. Doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

  


* * *

  


It’s a bad Friday night, though not worse than most others. The knocking creeps through the apartment like an insidious sentient mist, something out of a Stephen King movie, writhing up his pant legs and filling Grimmjow with an irrational sort of apprehension. He drags his feet towards the source, hoping to see Edrad or Yylfordt waiting outside after all, but honestly fearing Inoue or even his—

It is Inoue, smiling brightly at the sight of him. 

“Hey, neighbour! I’m having a little get-together with some friends, and I was wondering if maybe you’d like to join us?” 

“Hiii, Orihime’s neighbour!” He sticks his head out slightly to see two women leaning out of Inoue’s door, one blonde and waving animatedly, the other small, dark-haired and still, openly staring. 

He can’t do this tonight. His chest throbs with that knowledge, stomach curling in on itself, fingers tightening their grip on the beer can to produce a loud crack. _But why not?_ , he asks himself. They’re having fun in there, he— he was having fun, too, right? Why couldn’t they have fun together? /em>You’ve had too much, replies that gut-wrenching uneasiness. _You’ll ruin it_. The voice sounds like no one but himself, but Grimmjow is honestly inclined to disagree. 

Seeing his hesitation, Inoue sheepishly adds, “They’re really curious about you,”

Something inside of him clamps down further at the thought of being scrutinized by her gal pals. He’s not that drunk, but he’s had too much to pretend to be sober. And why is that such a problem? Arisawa was decent company, why shouldn’t these women be? It’s a Friday night, Inoue probably has a bottle open in her apartment, _Grimmjow_ doesn’t have a problem with— with any of it, but his parents - his mother’s face flashes bright in his mind for an instant, clear and loud like fireworks - he wouldn’t want to face them like this. So why is Inoue reminding him of his fucking mother? 

“No.” he forces out, confused and resentful - at himself? His parents? Inoue? “I have my own friends over tonight.” 

His apartment seems silent as the grave in the wake of that sentence, but distantly, _distantly_ , Grimmjow can hear the scene where Lola and her boyfriend discuss what she would do if he died. It sounds like company; the possibility that Inoue could recognize the dialogue of _Lola Rennt_ in its original language is very slim. But any minute now the scene will end, the boyfriend will wake up and the score will swell into jarring synths and she’ll know he’s just playing the same film he’s played a million times, just white fucking noise for—

“Ooh, your friends can join us~!” calls the waving woman’s voice. She definitely isn’t sober. So who the hell cared that he’d had a few?

“Not tonight. They’re waiting for me.” 

Grimmjow might’ve added a ‘sorry’, as an afterthought to the expression on Inoue’s face. Then he shuts them out. 

“ _Du bist aber nicht gestorben,_ ” Lola’s voice intones from his TV. 

“ _Nicht?_ ” Grimmjow quotes along with the boyfriend, as the synths bury the dream sequence in futuristic noise. It’s going too far. He should— _wants to_ — stop. He also knows that he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he did stop now. He stares blankly at his TV as Lola’s boyfriend gets back up from the pavement, blood pouring out of his nose and mouth. 

In the end he decides that the best course of action is to give himself the worst possible hangover, in the hopes of deterring his future self from drinking ever again. 

Yes. It feels good to have a plan.

The next morning he wakes up to find Inoue’s birdfeeder smashed to pieces on his kitchen floor, birdseed strewn everywhere, like bloodspatter in a crime scene. The kitchen sink is clogged with dried chunks of vomit - and even a fresh helping of stomach acid does nothing to dislodge them. He barely has anything left to regurgitate anyway. Braced against the countertop, mouth open to let the sour saliva run freely, Grimmjow tucks his chin inwards and tilts his face down to the floor where his victim lay. It’s not just torn to pieces. The pieces are torn to pieces. Nothing glue can salvage.

He doesn’t know any curse words harsh enough to express this feeling. 

Later, as the shower washes away the worst of his discomfort and fills his head with nothing but warm, forgiving mist, he still has no memory of doing it.

  


* * *

  


Four months after bumping into Inoue in the supermarket, it happens again. He’s no longer hostile so much as just plain awkward, crouched down by the bags of jasmine rice, trying to decide if the cheapest option might be too cheap to be edible.

“Sorry about my friends being nosey,” she tells him sheepishly, as if it wasn’t literal weeks ago. 

Grimmjow was having a fine day before being transported back to Angst, Vomit and Birdseed Land. He now regrets choosing to do his shopping before going home to shower and change, and he fucking hates that she brings this shit out in him. Dropping his gaze from the bags of rice on the bottom shelf to his muddy work boots, he glances over at Inoue’s shoes, expecting something impeccably clean and sensible, and is surprised to see a bloodstain right on the toe of her ankle boot. 

“It was my own idea to invite you though, not theirs! And uh, if you…” she quiets and he looks upwards, expecting an explanation for the blood. He’s thrown off by the nervousness in Inoue’s face, the open way she looks at him, unapologetically uncertain. 

“Uhm, if you meant what you said about ‘some other time’ though… I’m having a Christmas party again this year, and I was wondering if you’d like to come. I’d like it if you came. I mean— I invited Bird Breath’s owner too! Maybe you can bond over cats...” One glance at his face makes her drop that idea. “... or you can just correct her spelling.”

Inoue fiddles with her hair, clearly a stress habit, and somehow he’s certain that she isn’t asking him as a prank. Grimmjow rises from his crouch, tries to determine whether she’s worrying about the thought of him actually agreeing to come, or… or him not wanting to. He absolutely wouldn’t put it past Inoue to invite him out of some sense of social necessity. 

“Th’other neighbours gonna be there?”

Because if he has to experience that old dude happily butcher some foreign Christmas classic and then turn around and pretend to not understand Grimmjow’s Japanese...

“No, no, it’s not really an all ages party. Heh. I did invite miss Takahashi, but she has work obligations, so it’s just my friends.” And Grimmjow, for some reason. He has no clue who Takahashi is. 

Inoue is still waiting for an answer. She looks freakishly earnest.

“Might drop by.”

“Cool! Cool, okay, I won’t harass you anymore, I’ll. See you around.” Then she fucking _bows_ before heading towards the dairy aisle. 

“Remember to buy nutmeg,” he calls after her, a sort of weak half-joke, except she turns on the spot with genuine gratitude on her face. Thanking him profusely, she walks to the other end of Dried Goods, to the spice shelves, and picks out a little bag of brown powder. Huh. Never would’ve thought to look there. 

“What do you even use it for?” Grimmjow asks, mostly to himself.

“This time? Eggnog! I’m gonna try to do some sort of Christmas drink every year. Make it a tradition. Last year me and Tatsu tried making glühwein.”

“What, seriously? Was it good?” 

Inoue wrinkles her nose. 

“Well, ya made it wrong then. Don’t tell me you boiled it.”

“There may have been a few bubbles. I turned down the stove when that happened though.” At Grimmjow’s derogatory scoff, she puffs up, as threatening as a feather duster, “I did all the spices right! Cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, star anis—”

“Black— Black fucking pepper!? You might as well have shat in it!” He says this way too loud, causing a nearby pensioner to let out a scandalized gasp, and Inoue to slap her hand over her own mouth, equally scandalized but infinitely more amused, clearly holding back laughter. 

“Didn’t know you were part of the Christmas police!”

“Fuck Christmas, glühwein is serious. Try that shit again and you’ll get sniped where you stand.” Fucking black pepper, what the hell. 

“Let them try,” Inoue says archly, folding her arms and trying to play along. “I’m told I have a small head.”

Which is the single worst clap back he’s heard in his entire life. Makes him snort whenever he thinks about it for the rest of the day.

  


* * *

  


It’s Christmas Eve and Grimmjow is not leaving his damn flat. 

He has re-dyed his hair. His ears are now blue. He doesn’t know what the fuck to put on his body. 

Grimmjow owns one nice dress shirt, which used to be a rich cream colour, a shade that somehow didn’t make him look pale. Didn’t know how the fuck to wash it. Gradually the shirt got darkened by the black band tees he inevitably also tossed into the machine and eventually the shirt turned the colour of dirty dishwater. He’s already fucking sweating. He knows if he wears it tonight, his fresh dye is gonna stain the collar blue, too. It’s just not an option. 

There are other button downs, black ones, ones that had been nice until he’d worn them to work because he’d been too lazy to do laundry. Work had soiled them with wood stainer, put tiny tears in the fabric, always just one or two, only the diameter of a nail, but placed right on his chest where his blindingly white skin would peer through in the most obvious way. 

No, and Grimmjow isn’t about to invest new clothing for some stupid neighbour party, he doesn’t know the dress code and he isn’t gonna fucking go. He’s taken off his good jeans and put on his rattiest comfort tee and he is gonna stay right on his couch, all night, in his boxers and watch his favourite movie and drink everything he’s got. 

He isn’t even surprised at the knocking on his door. 

He is slightly surprised, however, when it isn’t Inoue. On Grimmjow’s doorstep are three women, one of whom he’s seen before and two of whom he definitely hasn’t. As he opens the door, they assume matching positions of piousness, folding their hands in front of their chests. They begin to sing a Christmas carol, entirely out of tune, and they make it exactly one and a half lines into the song before the one on the left breaks and starts laughing, causing the other two to lose it completely.

“Merry Christmas, mister neighboouur,” croons the one he has seen before, the blonde one who wanted him to join them last time. She assumes a Marilyn Monroe-esque pose and seductively leans her hands on two shapely thighs, except her hands slide right off her knees and then the three of them are practically hollering with laughter as the woman almost brains herself on the hallway’s green linoleum. Grimmjow feels like the butt of the joke. 

“You can join us now, Jeikarukaru!” the shorter one insists, “Peak fashionably late time is the present, you knooow.” And isn’t that just red wine in a sentence.

“Jesus Christ,” he states, “Let me put pants on.” 

Which he really shouldn’t have said, because apparently they hadn’t even noticed and now he has to slam his door shut on several offers of pants help. He yanks his nice black jeans back on and then changes to one of his better concert tees. These fucking boozers are seeing double anyway; clearly it never mattered in the first place.

They’ve managed to stumble over to the mailboxes at the other end of the hall by the time he comes back out, but he is immediately greeted by lewd whooping. 

“Can I call you Gimojo?” the green-haired one asks faux-demurely and he gives her a scathing refusal even as the corners of his mouth turns upwards.

“Why not?” she pouts dramatically, throwing herself at the air where she expects an arm to be and ended up unintentionally giving him a sideways bear hug. 

“Cause that’s not how you say my fucking name,” he laughs, thoroughly winded. He doesn’t know how much he managed to drink before they got him, but clearly it’s the perfect amount because he isn’t even pissed, only floaty and a little overheated. They stumble to the next door over and the little brown-haired one holds it open for them. 

“Hey neighbour!” Inoue greets him as he trips over approximately 20 pairs of shoes and impales himself on a coat hook. She’s wearing an actual Christmas sweater dress — three words which should never appear together but which somehow suit her perfectly. Her apartment is hot with merry-making bodies, and it shows in her pink cheeks, but Inoue doesn’t look tipsy in the slightest, just very happy, and Grimmjow’s stomach knots up in a way he honestly doesn’t care for tonight.

“Hey Sniper’s Nightmare. I’ve been abducted.”

“Hopefully you can find your way home again,” she smiles, “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.” Before he can protest that group introductions are the fucking worst and there’s not a chance in hell he’ll remember any names anyway, Inoue leads him into her guest room, which has apparently been furnished as an extra living room. The door has been removed from its hinges and is nowhere to be seen. Her taste in music is weird. And _loud_.

“Everyone,” she shouts with impressive volume, “this is my neighbour!” 

Inoue gestures grandly to Grimmjow, automatically prompting him to declare,

“Jaegerjaquez Grimmjow!”

“... Gurijuu!”

“Cunt,” he scoffs, and clearly this is not what Inoue’s friends are expecting, although they seem more surprised at the way she laughs it off. 

“This is Shinji,” Inoue says, in the tone of someone commencing a very long list. A dude with absolutely moronic hair waves at him and bares a set of teeth that are possibly visible from space. Grimmjow sighs and gives the guy the slightest of nods. 

A dozen or two forgotten names later and he’s finally free to grab a glass of lukewarm eggnog and find a seat. Inoue’s friend group is considerably more varied than he thought it would be. He’s not the only guy in a t-shirt, although a few are definitely in their formal wear. It’s a pretty good mix for a party. Some of her friends look like office mice, while others have even brighter hair and arguably more incriminating tats than Grimmjow. The latino taking up half her fucking kitchen looks like he’s done time, and Grimmjow realizes with a jolt that he almost threw down with that dude last year. No sign of the punk that punched his face in, though. Pity.

Inoue has made the choice to fill the actual living room with a dining table that folds out take up almost the entire room. Around it are mostly folding chairs, along with an old-fashioned kitchen bench that he assumes is the only seating she normally uses. Clearly entertaining guests is what her whole place is planned around. 

He takes a seat next to some degenerate with an actual 69 tattooed on his face, expecting interesting conversation. Two drinks later and he concludes that Face Tats is hands down the most boring vanilla dude Grimmjow has had the displeasure of talking to. He scans the kitchen for Arisawa or Inoue, finding no trace of the former but realizing that the latter is in fact right behind him by the countertop, currently being ambushed by one of the chicks who stole him from his home, the one with green hair.

“Soo I noticed _Kurosaki_ isn’t here tonight - how are things going with you two?” she asks in a tone suggestive enough to make Grimmjow openly turn his head towards the two women, although they don’t seem to notice. 

“G-good!” Inoue responds with a very interesting blush. Aha. Girl Scout may not be as innocent as he first thought. “He’s just really busy with the residency and the baby.”

 _Baby?_

The woman squeals and starts interrogating Inoue about the little miracle, her voice reaching a truly terrifying pitch when Inoue breaks out some pictures on her phone. Frowning, Grimmjow turns to his left, where Face Tats is simping pitifully for Inoue’s blonde friend with the tits.

“Hey,” Grimmjow says, to no avail. The music has been turned up, and turned annoyingly experimental. He elbows the guy in his side. “Inoue dating someone with a kid?” Surely it isn’t hers? Grimmjow finds he cannot picture Inoue having a child without living with it. 

“Excuse me?” the guy asks politely. He almost manages to mask his annoyance at being interrupted in a doomed attempt to score, but not quite.

Grimmjow repeats the name he heard, wondering why it sounds familiar. 

“Ku-ro-sa-ki. Has a kid?”

“Oh. No, Kurosaki doesn’t have a baby, I don’t think. Pretty sure his sister got one though. They both live above the clinic. Inoue helps out there sometimes, now if you’ll excuse me,” he says, turning back to the blonde. Of course, the clinic. Family of doctors, huh. And Inoue as the little nurse. Fucking figures.

“So, what happened to your arm?” asks the blonde. She’s leaning over Face Tats, tits all but spilling into the guy’s lap, really trying to let Grimmjow know she has ’em. He pretends not to see.

“Shark attack,” he responds blandly, taking a swig of his beer. 

“Yeah, that’s what I’d say too,” she replies, backing off and leaning back to cross one leg over the other. Oh, but those thighs really are divine. Shit. On second thought, maybe just to fuck with the guy. 

“You don’t understand,” Grimmjow says, “ _I_ attacked the shark. Had a harpoon originally, but—”

“— the shark tore off your good harpooning-arm?” She smirks indulgently. 

“Nah, nah. I got the harpoon in the shark, okay, but the fucker wouldn’ die, so I tore off my arm to use as a weapon an—”

“Wait, you _what?_ You _disarmed_ yourself to—” Grimmjow cuts her off to laugh loudly in her face. It’s a warm, genuine laugh, and she joins in as well. They’re both leaned in over Face Tats and it’s probably the closest the poor sap is gonna get to her all night. Grimmjow doesn’t spare the guy a glance.

“Yeah, that makes no sense, honestly,” Arisawa suddenly butts in from the other side of the table,  
“You should’ve said the shark came at you - all gaping jaws of death - and you tore off your arm to keep its mouth propped open while you narrowly escaped!”

“What do you mean _escaped_ , I slayed that fucker!” Grimmjow exclaims, at the same time as Blonde Tits points out, “A severed human arm is beyond useless for propping, like, anything.”

“Which is why it would be even worse as a weapon!” Arisawa exclaims, gesturing so wildly that she spills her beer. 

Grimmjow has no idea what’s going on anymore, only that he’s cracking up and also feels attacked in the best way possible. Arisawa’s arm is healed enough for a proper match now, surely? He‘s about ready to throw down with her, when he sees Inoue stumbling frantically after a new party guest. 

Another blonde, this one with absolutely no tits, who barrels past them into the kitchen. She hasn’t bothered taking off her shoes, clearly searching for something with all the intensity of a bloodhound. She stalks around the dining area before bounding back to the living room. Emerges looking even more determined and then heads for the stereo. She turns it off with enough force that it honestly may never come back on. 

Even as all heads turn towards her in the sudden silence, the young woman loses not one ounce of her feral intensity. Grimmjow is… suitably impressed. 

“Which one of you is Jengujangu Ginjo,” she demands. 

He looks around for the sad fuck with such a ridiculous name. The heads all swivel towards him. Fucking. Yeah, obviously. 

The woman goes to loom over Grimmjow, which is a feat considering that she stands about an inch taller than him when he’s _seated_. 

“This is for Bird Breath,” she declares and aggressively... hands him a beer.

“What the fuck. This ain’t even cold.”

“Cold?! You gonna be ungrateful with me, you little shit?” she fumes, which is quite rich. 

He turns the beer over in his hand. “This Is the cheapest brand in Japan, you damn ingrate.”

“You _what_?!”

“Your shitty stray coulda died of fuckin’ dehydration if it weren’t for me!” 

He continues on to demand at least a bottle of good whiskey, but it’s barely audible over the screeching. 

“Bird Breath shoulda clawed off your goddamn _nut_ —”

“...Hiyori, you made it!” says that blond dude with the horrible haircut.

“Get off my cock, Shinji, I’m tryna—” she snarls when someone discreetly turns the stereo back on and whatever she was trying to do is drowned out by 70’s disco and people picking their conversations back up as if nothing out if the ordinary had transpired. Bird Breath’s owner stomps over to… her brother..?.. and begins ferociously trying to twist his nipples off through his shirt. The other party guests just sort of calmly part around the pair. 

Inoue knows some seriously strange people and Grimmjow needs a smoke break. 

He heads into Inoue’s garden, which is mostly packed away under a layer of winter mulch. Pine boughs cover the smaller herbs, which have been thoroughly cut back for the season. The hardier shrubs merely have their roots covered by bark or needles, their main shelter being the tall fence enclosing the garden. 

The pine smell is crisp and lovely, and Grimmjow enjoys polluting it with a good cig. He’s about halfway through his smoke when Inoue pops her head out. 

“You okay?” she asks, “I’m sorry, about Hiyori… uhm.” _Doing that._

“Stop apologizing for shit that ain’t on you,” Grimmjow scoffs. “Didn’ know you two were all buddy-buddy now.”

“Close the goddamn door, what the hell it’s fucking freezing!” shouts someone from inside. Grimmjow glances behind him, confirms that, yes, that is Bird Breath’s owner. She’s not standing remotely close to the door.

“... This is my third time meeting her,” Inoue grins sheepishly, shutting the door. 

“I want to steal her cat even more now.” 

Inoue giggles and wraps her arms around herself, saying nothing but seemingly being content to stay out in the cold with him. He’s pretty sure it’s cold. Feels it less when he’s drinking. 

“You should get one.”

“I should get a cat?” 

Shit, that _is_ a weird thing to say, isn’t it? Grimmjow digs his heels in and just nods, taking a drag on his cigarette. She still seems completely fucking sober.

“You sure you’re not projecting?” Inoue teases, and damn it, he probably is. “I’ve been thinking about it though. But I wanna finish the apartment before I start bringing a pet in. Don’t want to subject some poor creature to all this drilling and hammering.”

Grimmjow coughs out a breath of smoke. “What, like this poor creature?” he says, outraged, pointing at his own face. Inoue just fucking laughs at him again.

“Fuckin’ bitch.”

There’s no heat behind the insult, and suddenly he wonders when that happened. Is it because he’s drunk? He’s pretty sure he called her a cunt to her face earlier too. And she’s not even bothered by it. Cunts usually don’t like being called out. Does that mean she isn’t one?

“Sorry. The blue looks lovely on you, you know,” she says, gesturing to her own auburn locks. “I mean, green didn’t look bad either.”

Grimmjow rolls his eyes at how the woman can’t seem to complete a sentence without backtracking somehow. “The green _was_ blue, ’m just shit at upkeep. And don’t change the fuckin’ subject here.” He can’t remember what the subject was. He assumes he’s supposed to be angry about something, but can’t be assed.

“How much more can you even do to this place? Looks amazin’. Professional opinion.”

Because it really does. 

He went to piss after finishing his eggnog (and possibly vomit, because that shit was vile) and for a second he thought he’d somehow entered a different building entirely. It looks nothing like his own washroom, the tiling all new and very well-done. It’s not even the same shape as his own; made bigger by throwing up a wall in the odd corner of the living room where he has his laundry rack, and then divided into separate toilet and bathing rooms. Of course Inoue is incapable of shitting where she showers. 

She’s put in a round ofuro - or had someone put in, more likely - and on one of the walls a stylized fruit tree has been handpainted in full bloom. It is, fucking, hotel levels of fancy. Puking in a bathroom like that had seemed punishable by death, although you probably wouldn’t even smell it over all the damn scented sticks or whatever they’re called. Ugh. She must come from money, although buying an apartment in this part of town is not exactly an upmarket decision. An act of rebellion, maybe, although a pretty stupid one. 

“Professional? You build houses?”

“Nah, not from scratch-like. I just change ‘em up.” There is a word for that, and Grimmjow has forgotten it. 

“You work with renovations?!” That’s the word. “Oh my gosh, I’m glad I didn’t know or I would’ve been too nervous to let you in!”

“What? Nah, seriously, s’a really good job. Kitchen’s beautiful.”

“Thank you! I was really unsure whether to do the kitchen, actually, because what I really wanted was to take down the wall to the guest room, open up the space, and make like a—” Inoue looks really cute when she gets excited. She might be a fancy bitch with a doctor boyfriend and all, but she isn’t snooty. Her friends are weird though. Grimmjow’s friends are fucking weird. Maybe Inoue can be his… wait... is she already? She’s not talking anymore. Shit. 

“I can do that,” Grimmjow declares, utilizing maximum conviction to make up for the fact that he has no idea what she wants to do with the kitchen. 

“You can? Wow, that’d be amazing, I— I would pay you, of course!”

“I have money,” he replies, which is hardly relevant and barely true. Just then, Arisawa pokes her head out to ask Inoue if she would mind a party guest using her oven to heat up some frozen garlic bread. 

“Uhhh. How much has he had to drink?” Inoue asks at the same time as Grimmjow points his slightly swaying finger right at the woman’s face. 

“We have a score to settle, Arisawa. Get the fuck out here.”

She only smiles grimly.

Half an hour later, Grimmjow has a tampon up his nostril to soak up the blood. It’s a festive look, to be sure, but he is a little miffed that no one bothered to tell him exactly how many titles Arisawa has under her belt. 

“I did mention championships to you,” Inoue tuts as she hands him a bag of frozen peas. Lies. He remembers no such thing. “This’ll work much better than the beer.”

“Thank god,” Grimmjow says, removing the now lukewarm bottle from his face and chugging it. “What’re they playing?”

“Hmm, looks like King’s Cup.”

Grimmjow scoffs, “What’re you guys in, the eight grade?”

“It’s nostalgic. A lot of us met at uni and we almost never get together anymore.” She sends a beaming smile at the huge latino coming out of the bathroom, and gets a small quirk of his lips in return. “Chad flew out to be here, he’s only staying a few days. We go way back.” 

“Didn’t ask for your life story,” Grimmjow says, moving out of the way as the guy steps closer to Inoue. He heads for the countertop and reaches around the half-empty punch bowl of eggnog to get another beer, mostly just to have something to hold on to. He’s definitely reaching a certain threshold, knows himself well enough to be certain that memories will be missing tomorrow if he keeps going at this pace. A quick scan of the room reveals that everyone he can stomach is playing that shitty drinking game. Only Bird Breath’s owner and two of her weird friends are arguing over by the stereo, looking approximately one skipped song away from a fist fight. 

“Ah, the disgraced warrior returns,” Face Tats grins as he gives up and approaches the dining table. Grimmjow squeezes in right between him and Blonde Tits, just to piss the guy off. 

“You know the rules?” she smiles sweetly.

“The rules are you drink, right? I can do that.” He’s pretty sure he can, because everyone at this table seem blasted already.

“Oh hey, it’s the guy! You got your ass kicked by Arisawa,” says some dipshit with eboy hair. He immediately gets dunked on by someone else pointing out that he, too, has received gratuitous asskickings from Arisawa.

“Renji!” shouts a girl who seriously looks too small to be drinking sake, “Don’t you peak at the cards, you crook!”

“That’s rich coming from someone who bumps the table during Jenga,” replies the tall dude with the tribals. Another argument almost takes off before everyone’s attention is brought back to the game. It’s a lively crowd, but not very interesting to Grimmjow, who has no idea why their in-jokes are funny or why their feuds hold significance. He starts off taking small sips whenever the game requires it, but gradually graduates to proper gulps, until the whole room is buzzing and incomprehensible and he has to piss.

Only in the washroom does one feel how truly wasted one is. Grimmjow definitely pisses on the floor a little. He throws some toilet paper at it and staggers back outside, where the noise is suddenly too overwhelming. He staggers across the room an into the small garden, which is filled with a handful of other party guests. A glance inside tells him that someone has spilled a drink across the card game on the table, which is currently being wiped down by Inoue and one of the other women. Inoue appears happy enough, waving away any apologies that her friend might be making, and still she doesn’t seem inebriated in the slightest. 

Grimmjow doesn’t understand the point of throwing a party if you’re not gonna fucking participate, and he voices this opinion, but no one in the garden seems to notice. 

“—viously the waiter is the waiter, how is that even a question?!” asks the tatted meathead, looking ready to pull out his red hair in chunks.

“Well, if you’re waiting for the waiter, then _you’re_ the actual waiter, right, the and the waiter is actually the waitee.”

“ _No_ , ‘cause the waiter is waiting on you - that’s, like, the actual job description!”

“I fought a waiter once,” Grimmjow chips in, and it all gets a bit blurry after that, conversation devolving into meaningless chaos.

The table gets clean, or at least less sticky, and there is another game, maybe different than what they were playing earlier, but he’s honestly not sure.

He sits down next to the green-haired woman this time and she tells him how jealous she is that he’s a natural blonde and doesn’t need to bleach his roots before dyeing his hair. She seems nice. Something touches his other side and it’s that blonde one again, smiling at him in a very specific way and he knows what that means even when he’s wasted. She’s older, and slightly trashy, or maybe just trashed, but then again she would need to be in order to go for Grimmjow. 

Her knee bumps against his under the table, and he rubs it without thinking - hers, that is. He’s reaching the stage of intoxication where gravity doesn’t quite feel like it applies to him, every movement likely to go on forever if there isn’t any immovable object to stop him. The knee under his hand moves further towards him and his tingling fingers spill down onto the inside of a leg - oh? 

He draws a curious circle with one finger, just around the crease where the leg bends downwards. Again, the knee presses up against his own, gently. Grimmjow looks up, glances at the woman next to him. He’s sure she’s told him her name, and he really should remember it. Her eyes are fixed on the drinking game, but the smug stretch of her lips speaks volumes. An impulse arises, to bite the smirk off her mouth. Her lipstick has mostly smudged off, lost on the various bottles and glasses she’s drank from all evening, and it’s not a bad look for her.

Underneath the table, two of his fingers trace a path from the knee and one inch further up the leg. Back to the knee. Two inches further up. Back again. Three inches. Back. Four. 

The game continues atop the table, growing only more rambunctious. The journey of his fingers is occasionally interrupted by those identifying as male having to stand up quickly or take a shot, or by everyone being required to raise their hands and mime having cat ears or some shit like that.

Whenever the partygoers settle back down, the fingers pick up their own little game under the table and move higher. After a while, the knee is all but forgotten. Grimmjow has found a spot where she’s ticklish. She’s wearing the type of stockings that are almost see-through, meant to go unnoticed yet give the appearance of a slightly healthier skin tone. 

Hers have a tear in them.

It’s small, just a fingertip, and a fingertip is exactly what Grimmjow presses inside. Her skin is mesmerizingly soft and the muscles of her thigh clench at the contact. He snakes his single finger in as far as it’ll go, which isn’t nearly as far as he wants it to go but still plenty for Grimmjow to be able to feel that this thigh has been shaved very, very high up. 

Entranced by this discovery, he entirely misses the fact that everyone… with coloured hair? With an ‘a’ in their surname? With a seat next to someone wearing black? Whatever common denominator makes him part of the group, he’s supposed to bang on the table three times or drink. The green-haired one elbows him in the side, and across the table, Arisawa makes a joke about him having had too much to drink already. 

He’s only too pleased to play that part. It’s not even a lie.

Grimmjow finally reaches the warmest place on the glorious thigh under the table - a place that isn’t really thigh at all anymore. A place he knows is even warmer on the inside. 

The blonde hides her small gasp by downing the contents of her cup. He pushes a little harder, and a moan escapes her half-open mouth. It’s not loud, but Grimmjow was listening for it. The cacophony of the party is almost certain to have swallowed the noise to everyone else, but just in case someone does notice, she mumbles, seemingly to herself,

“Tha’s some damn good sake.”

Grimmjow drinks to that.

“Migh’head home soon,” he mutters, also seemingly to himself. A brief, heated glance, and then a slender hand reaches down to cup him quickly, squeezing expertly before casually reaching up to pour another cup of sake. Grimmjow is sold. He really should get this woman’s name. Fuck, he probably has already and just forgotten. Shit. 

Goodbyes don’t take long, because he doesn’t fucking know anybody. He spots Inoue in the living room, trying to wake up someone passed out on the couch, and gives her a sloppy salute when she makes eye contact. She abandons her current project and heads towards him smiling, spurting some ‘thanks for coming’s and ‘hope you had a good time’s and he can’t find his fucking shoes in the mountain of footwear in the entryway. He almost topples over trying to bend down and look for them and _fuck_ everything is woozy now. 

Distantly, Inoue asks him what his shoes look like and he doesn’t even remember and that’s not right. He squats against the wall for a moment, rethinking his existence, before remembering that he didn’t put _on_ any shoes before being dragged from his flat and crossing the short distance to Inoue’s with socked feet. 

This is harder to explain than it should be, but he thinks she understands. What a sweetheart.

Stumbling the few meters home is like an out of body experience, but it happens, or passes or whatever, and he can finally fall against his closed door, spending a few seconds just trying to mouth breathe without drooling.

Then he hears a noise - heels clacking against the green linoleum outside, heading from Inoue’s apartment towards his and then… past? Grimmjow throws open his door.

“Ey, what the fuck, ya’ve gone too far.” 

He takes a step towards her, confused about whether he’s misunderstood something. He almost fucking forgot, but that’s beside the point, he remembers now, knows, this was something she wanted. He wants? 

She says nothing, only crowds him up against the wall beside his door, reaching up his chest to his neck and fuck, did she pull that stunt just to get him out here? What a dirty fucking exhibitionist, his dick thinks delightedly, blinking its little dick hole eye blearily and stirring to life. Maybe. That sounds wrong. 

The blonde presses her glorious tits against his chest and Grimmjow groans aloud just at the thought of her nipples straining against the sleek fabric of her dress, _yes_ such a good idea. A divine thigh presses in hard between his legs and shit, he has to— he needs— _they_ need to get inside right now. 

The door closes a second time.

  


* * *

  


Grimmjow wakes up with extreme reluctance, awareness forced upon him by some cruel and malevolent god. He is parched, his tongue shriveled up into a smelly sponge, and his stomach both demands and denounces any food. He wishes he wasn’t aware of these things, but the punishment keeps coming. 

Someone is in his bed. 

It sinks in slowly, and he refuses to turn around and check, but this does not make the issue go away. Someone is breathing behind him. The someone moans in their sleep, and the sound is almost certainly female.

He remembers Inoue’s party with... relative ease, although it takes him a moment to place her apartment, so similar yet different to his own. It takes him a lot longer to figure out who he took home. Eventually he turns around, and he feels very much deserving of a medal for the effort. 

Beside him lays a blonde woman. 

He can… vaguely place a blonde at the party, but this one looks different, rumpled and mascara-smeared and less… everything, in the daylight. Her forehead has faint winkles. She’s drooling on his good pillow. She’s very naked. 

Grimmjow is also very naked. Guess their slumber party wasn’t PG. Vaguely he wonders just how he managed to get it up. The ache in the back of his head is getting worse, an increasing weight that feels like it’ll pull him straight through the floor and down to some place molten and sulphurous. A fiery death doesn’t seem so bad right now, but Grimmjow would like to avoid any bright lights, please. Instead he closes his eyes again, focusing on just breathing for an hour or so, until he mans up enough to go and get himself some water.

The woman hasn’t stirred yet. 

He leans over his kitchen sink like he wants to crawl inside it and drinks straight from the tap. It’s good. Makes him a little less ‘creature’ and a little more ‘person’. Mouth still tastes fuzzy, but his head is… marginally clearer. 5% maybe. He fills two plastic bottles, grips them tightly by the caps and his hand feels so weak, but the couch is close by. 

Nausea hits him when he flops down a bit too violently. It passes. He huddles his water bottles close to his chest and just breathes, thankful for a dim, cloudy day outside. Time passes, somehow. Too slowly. 

The feeling of being invaded creeps in the more he starts to feel human again. Why the fuck did he need to take her inside. 

Jesus fuck. 

Why did he need to take her, period. 

He looks blankly at the black screen of his TV, at the mess on his coffee table. There’s a beer can positively glued to the surface of it. Grimmjow wrenches it loose with a jarring crunch and then just puts it back down a few inches away from the spilled liquid. Fuck, he’s so shaky. 

The countertops of the kitchen look like he’s hosted his own dinner party; a feast of empty ramen cups and pizza boxes with the crusts laying around on top, a handful of spreading knives laying around with remnants of whatever he wanted to put on his bread. Crumbs and ketchup and soy stains. Inoue’s probably already removed all traces of having guests over. 

He doesn’t know why he doesn’t want Inoue to know what sorry state his apartment is in. His friends know, and Inoue is- She was a good host. Nice. She’s been here a year now and has already transformed her place into one that looks about three times more expensive than his own, and that doesn’t matter, it’s not. They cost the same anyway. It’s. Grimmjow has been here four times as long? Five? And he’s… dented his floor when he tried to lean against his shelf piss-drunk and pushed it over. Put stains in the kitchen that he doesn’t know how to remove, not that he’s really tried, but. It’s. 

Doesn’t want her friend to see, and hand in some rapport about him being. This. He keeps leaving dirty clothes on the floor. To gather beer spills. There something that looks like mold in the bottom of the cup where he keeps his toothbrush. He’s not sure what it is, only looks down at it whenever he brushes his teeth.

It’s a place to start.

The gunk washes off just by swirling some warm water in the cup, and he takes it as a good sign. There was a beer bottle hiding behind his toilet, but it is gone now, and just those two changes make him feel a little better. 

The clothes are picked up and used to soundlessly transport noisy clanking cans and other rubbish to the guest room, where it can be quietly hidden away from Inoue’s sleeping friend. It’s not exactly deep-cleaning, but it’s something. He would somehow feel worse to have her suddenly walk in on him scrubbing the place down. The kitchen/living area becomes tidy, if not clean, and he settles back onto his couch to wait for Inoue’s friend to wake up.

She does not.

 _Lola_ finishes playing on the TV, so he puts on a CD (at a significantly higher volume than the TV had been at) and takes a shower. Still nothing when he comes out. It’s pretty much the job of the one being taken home to wake up before the one owning the home and get the hell out, right? Isn’t that common courtesy? 

His stomach is starting to feel settled enough for a meal, and by meal he means a coffee. There is exactly enough instant mix left for one cup, and he takes this as a good sign. The CD ends as he’s waiting for the water to boil, revealing the muted sound of Inoue vacuuming on the other side of the wall.

“Hey,” a voice croaks from behind him, and there is Inoue’s friend, still naked as the day she was born, making grabby hands at his coffee. 

“S’the last I have.”

“Aren’t you sweet,” she smiles taking— _swiping_ the fucking cup right off the counter. “Got sugar?”

“No,” Grimmjow says, even though he totally does. She grunts in reply and looks around the room curiously. He has no interest in hearing whatever verdict she comes up with. 

“Nostalgic,” the woman decides, which isn’t quite what he was expecting, “Hime’s place looked just like this last year. I mean, I only saw it the once, but,” she makes some dumb wavey hand gesture. 

“Ya don’t see eachother often?” Grimmjow asks, with a flickering hope that this bitch lives far away and will go back there very soon. 

“Sadly no. I’m so busy these days,” the woman frowns, much to his relief. She plants her naked ass right on his couch and takes a sip of the coffee that is rightfully his.

“Yeah, me too. Meeting someone today, actually, soon, so… not really a good time for guests.” Smooth transition. Not true, but still smooth. 

“No?” she smirks, crossing her legs, “Hope I haven’t caused any trouble.”

“Nah, s’not that kinda someone. Still, best you don’t hang around today.” Blondie does not look impressed. 

He knows he’s being an ass, but shit, if this woman can just fuck off until next Christmas, or at least a few months, surely he won’t be worth talking about by then, right? Surely she’ll have lots of anecdotes to tell Inoue that don’t revolve around Grimmjow being a rude slob with—

“I understand. I can head over to Orihime’s then, don’t worry.” Okay, that’s officially a backfire, _okay_ —

“Hey, I don’t mean to throw you out right away,” he lies through his goddamn teeth, “You can have your bath or whatever,” but she’s waving him off and getting up from his couch.

“No no, I don’t want to impinge on your busy schedule. Orihime makes killer breakfast anyway,” the bitch says, already heading down the hall, and he has to fucking follow her into the bedroom where she’s looking for her clothes.

“Seriously, I still have an hour or two. You- you go have a nice soak. I can get breakfast while you do. Thanks, uh, for last night.” Grimmjow has never in his life gone out to get breakfast for a fucking one night stand. This is new heights of fucking pathetic. 

The blonde’s posture changes, suddenly she’s leaning on one leg as if it’s about to give out and send her flying into his arms. She does have nice eyes, when she puts some heat into them.

“Mh. It was good, wasn’t it?” 

He has no answer to this question, so he gives her a smirk. For a second he wonders if she’s about to ask for round two (and would that be so bad?), but instead she just heads for his washroom, asking about fresh towels. 

Grimmjow breathes deep and weary. As the muted sound of rushing water washes over him from beyond the door, he starts looking for a sweatshirt and pants. Nothing else to do really.

It’s almost good to have something to do, instead of wretchedly wallowing in his hangover for a full 24 hours. The crisp air is gonna be nice for his headache. He knows this, yet never in hell would he have bothered to venture outside on his own. Maybe Grimmjow really is a dumbass.

Inside the washroom he hears nothing but the occasional quiet slosh of water, so he concludes that she is in fact taking a whole ass bath instead of just a shower like any sane person.

Zipping up his coat and treading into his boots, Grimmjow leaves behind Inoue’s nameless friend in search of whatever a post drunken hookup breakfast consists of. Bagels? Croissants? Fast food?

It doesn’t sound half bad actually. Outside the building’s front door some poor half-frozen dude is waiting around for some neighbour to let him in, and Grimmjow feels magnanimous enough to hold the door open for the guy. He’s trying to remember where the nearest bakery is, but something stops him. Something… 

That guy. Grimmjow wonders for a second if he was one of the party guests and forgot something at Inoue’s, but he’s sure he wasn’t there last night, would’ve remembered a head of hair that loud. 

Wait.

_Wait._

He was at the party _last year_. He almost _knocked Grimmjow the fuck out_.

“Hey!” he calls after him, and the obnoxious way the fucker says “what” seals the deal. This is the same bastard. 

“What what, asshole, don’t think I don’t remember you,” Grimmjow snarls, but the guy isn’t even looking at him, heading straight for Inoue’s door. 

“Fond memories only, I hope.” Oh, wrong fucking move to turn his back on an opponent. Grimmjow grabs the punk by the jacket and spins him around so they’re nose to nose. Delightly, he notices he is the taller of the two.

“Haven’t gotten beaten up enough?” the man smirks, but there’s a hardness in his eyes now and Grimmjow realizes all at once at he isn’t just referencing last Christmas, but the fact that he got his ass fucking handed to him last night by Arisawa and probably looks like actual dogshit. Embarrassed - that it happened, that he forgot, that he’s such a damn mess - he lets go of the guy’s jacket and takes a short step back. 

And kicks him right in the side of his fucking knee. 

It’s a nice low kick that doesn’t offset Grimmjow’s own balance too much, but still he braces for a rush of queasiness to follow the motion. It turns out adrenaline burns right through a hangover. What a miracle cure. The ginger asshole’s leg predictably buckles, but he manages to catch himself, just barely, by stooping into an unstable-looking crouch.

“Hey, what the—” 

Grimmjow follows up with a swift kick to his ribs - not hard enough to bruise anything, probably, just hard enough to send him on his ass. Justice. 

“Oi!” the guy shouts, loud enough to echo in the empty hallway. Grimmjow feels his face pulling into a proper grin. They’re even now, could just let it end there, but if the punk wants to keep going then he’s open to it. Last night he didn’t even have time to enjoy the rush of the fight, too intoxicated, too careless. 

He watches excitedly as the man gets back on his feet, his face his whole body now dangerous and alert. That makes two of them.

The ginger takes a swing at him and he dodges it, goes for another low but efficient kick to the shin. It doesn’t land perfectly, but close enough-

“Kurosaki!” a familiar voice calls out, and Grimmjow watches Inoue rush out of her doorway, towards himself and and— ow, _fuck_. Fucker clipped him right in the ear, probably aiming for the jaw until he turned his head. He’s gonna— Kurosaki? 

Yeah, she yells it again, twice, and suddenly she’s right there between them. 

“It’s okay, Inoue,” Kurosaki is saying, immediately stepping to the side and positioning them both so she’s the one behind him - as if Grimmjow is some kind of threat to her - and that’s relevant, that name… Jesus, why can’t his brain remember fucking anything after a drink, his ear _hurts_ — 

Another door opens, a nosey neighbour, except it’s his own door.

“Y’alright out here?” asks the blonde, dressed in one of his crewnecks, her light hair hidden in a damp towel.

“Rangiku?” asks Kurosaki and _that’s_ her fucking name, Rangiku, yeah, and Kurosaki is the name of…

Inoue’s boyfriend. 

Grimmjow swears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you enjoyed this fic in any capacity (or maybe especially if you didn’t?) please consider feeding this humble gremlin with some tasty feedback. this longboi chapter put up a good fight with me.


	6. Year 2: Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Grimmjow is surprised by the people in his life, for better and for worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bet u thought 2020 had done me in 😎 & ur not wrong
> 
> also **please note** the rating has been bumped up due to people knowing eachother...biblically

Grimmjow stumbles all the way from the parking lot to his building’s front door before he realizes. By the time he comes barreling back, Edrad has already driven away with his puked out leather jacket somewhere on the back seat, and in it, his keys, phone and wallet. 

It’s starting to drizzle. 

For a little while he just stands there, soaking in the despondency, trying to muster up a little ironic chuckle, but as the droplets steadily grow in size, Grimmjow takes the L and accepts that this probably won’t be something he can laugh at until next week. 

He shuffles back towards the front door, wondering if Inoue might be willing to let him in. Hasn’t talked to her since the day after that party, which… well. That was an experience. Having absolutely no idea idea what time it is, Grimmjow removes his hand from the warmth of his armpit to check, doubting that she’d even be awake. He aborts the motion when he remembers that his clock _is_ his phone. Obviously. Wouldn’t his father love to lord that over him. Aaand even if he got let into the building, he wouldn’t be able to get into his flat. Okay, it is a little funny. Maybe. Edrad will certainly think so tomorrow. Surely he’ll have fucking noticed Grimmjow’s shit by then.

Round the back it is. 

There is a chance that Grimmjow forgot to lock his garden door before leaving, so if he can just climb the gate to the building’s back… courtyard is not the right word, far too fancy. The space encasing all their shitty little gardens, the- oh fuck, whatever, it’s not like he’d know even when sober. God, his garden fence, too, he’ll have to climb that. 

And so he gets to it, swearing, sweating and slipping on the rain soaked surface. It’s coming down in earnest now, but the exercise keeps him warm for a little longer. When a big fat _cold_ droplet runs right down his scalp, sparking a trail of goosebumps down his spine, Grimmjow starts to realize just how shitty the next few hours might be. It’s the end of february. The days are warming slowly, and the probability of frost is low, but fuck. This is gonna be one hell of a flu.

With a last solid kick, he flops down onto a big bag of empty beer cans with a horrible clanging noise, cursing himself and the rest of the world at large as the old plastic tears and an avalanche of aluminum erupts beneath him. They clunk and clatter onto the overgrown tiles, loudly popping in on themselves under his weight. Some of those things had not been emptied completely, by the smell of things. 

First things first, check if the back door is unlocked.

It isn’t. 

Next step, let out any frustrations by kicking around some cans. In a dignified manner, naturally.

“Leas’the fuck’n couch’s still here,” Grimmjow slurs, although he’s fully prepared for the damn thing to now evaporate into thin air just to spite him. No? So far so good. Maybe the broken shelving unit can finally come in handy to make some sort of shelter. Brush off the cat turds first of course, thanks Bird Breath, you fuck. He tries to ease it down slowly, lean it against the couch, but the angle is off, the grass is wet and one wooden crunch later, Grimmjow has four stilts with no shelves attached.

“So this is what it’s come to,” he tells the remaining two-by-four in his grasp. His voice sounds somewhat unhinged.

“That you, neighbour?”

Sadly, it is. 

He turns his head upwards to where Inoue is squinting over the fence, up on her step ladder again. She’s brandishing her phone like a weapon in front of herself.

“... you filmin’ me?”

“No! I heard the- I was gonna call the police, I thought you were being burgled!”

“Would if I could,” he replies, briefly explaining the situation. The woeful tale is rewarded with Inoue’s head popping down and the step ladder floating over the top of the fence, to all appearances hovering there of its own accord. 

“I’ve heard of your jumping prowess, but it’s pretty slippery tonight,” the ladder speaks without vocal cords, sounding suspiciously like Grimmjow’s neighbour. And when he makes an interjection about how exactly the ladder is gonna get back over the fence, his neighbour says it can wait until they solve his key problem in the morning. Grimmjow does not let the use of “they” go unnoticed, although he has enough sense to not mouth off at the gift horse or whatever the hell the saying is.

This is how he finds himself inside Inoue’s apartment, dripping all over her pristine flooring. 

Her dining table has been folded back to a reasonable size and adorned with an array of potted plants which had been wisely hidden away from the drunken horde of party guests. The folding chairs have disappeared and allowed for Inoue’s armchair to take center stage by the window facing the garden. Two larger houseplants have been arranged on the floor beside it along with a neat basket full of yarn and needles. The relatively small living room feels cozy rather than cramped - a lush, productive and distinctly feminine space.

“Sorry to wake ya,” Grimmjow greets Inoue as she reemerges from the bathroom with two towels. A large one for him, and a small one resting atop her auburn hair, which has already turned dark brown from saturation.

“Oh, you didn’t. I was knitting a bodice for Uryuu’s new project and got carried away,” she grins, gesturing towards a mass of yarn on the armchair. “He’s been having a Mark Fast moment lately.” 

Whatever that means.

“He, uh, at the party?”

“Yeah, he was- oh wait, actually he fell asleep pretty early, you might not have spoken with him.”

“Ah.” 

A riveting conversation. She then offers him tea, to help warm up. Grimmjow declines, but Inoue insists that she wanted to make some for herself anyway and then he can’t find it in himself to say “no”. She’s given him a place to sleep, after all. But if he’d known the offer would come with the world’s most awkward fucking tea party, he might’ve opted to stay outside in the rain. The kettle is put on, and the silence is painfully loud. 

Grimmjow wishes (not for the first time) that he could stop alcohol from leaving his bloodstream. If he could at least have a damn smoke, but _nope_ , also in the jacket. 

“So… Where are you from?” 

The attempt at conversation makes him scowl — always the first damn thing on strangers’ minds, trying to place him into some vague map of western stereotypes. 

“Kobe,” he says, just to spite her. Instead, her whole face lights up. 

“I thought you had a bit of Kansai dialect! It’s so musical, oh, I miss hearing it around me. I worked at Osaka Castle for a season,” she tells him, as if her stint in Osaka’s historical tourism scene makes them some sort of long lost siblings. “When did you come here then?”

“For junior high,” Grimmjow replies, taken off guard at the turn of conversation. It’s been a long time since he thought about that time in his life. 

Briefly he’s transported to the backseat of his parents’ car during that long drive from Kobe to the unknown capitol region. To the numb feeling of failure for not being able to just stick it out at his old school. He remembers glaring holes into his father’s neck up front in the driver’s seat, angry and ashamed that relocating was determined to be the only solution. 

The loud click of Inoue’s kettle reaching its boiling point banishes the memory. 

“Ahhh, you left way before I came then,” she’s saying, “Wait, did you get to visit Expoland while it was still open?” 

This launches her into a thrilling yet ultimately disappointing tale of ghost-hunting for grieving Edo-period spirits in the Castle, and subsequently for a vengeful deceased rollercoaster-enthusiast in the closed and abandoned amusement park. Grimmjow… enjoys listening to her? It’s not the worst way to slowly sober up, and even though he’s tired, the prospect of not waking up with a hangover is definitely appealing. Inoue seems nowhere near ready for rest however, getting back up to refill the teapot after a brief but heated discussion on the best ice cream place in the Keihanshin area. 

As the gentle sound of running tap water fills the room a second time, Grimmjow skims over the many photographs lining her walls. Some faces he recognizes from her Christmas party, although he can’t place their names. Others he’s sure he hasn’t seen in the flesh. _Yet_ , his mind supplies, oddly. 

“Pretty popular, ain’t ya?” He says it without spite. It makes sense. She’s easy to talk to. 

Inoue turns from the sink, making an enquiring noise before following his gaze and smiling. 

“My found family,” she says, steeping the leaves, and Grimmjow homes in on her words like a heat-seeking missile. “I don’t have any biological family left— well, none that I have contact with. My brother raised me, and it’s been over a decade since he passed. I suppose my parents might still be around. I don’t actually know. They’re not the sort one can... easily get in touch with.”

He swallows her words hungrily, digesting their meaning. His head feels clear and fuzzy at the same time. _Kindred?_ She shares the information freely, but her voice betrays the appearance of calm when parents are brought up. Just a slight tremor, as if she hadn’t planned for her folks to show up in the middle of her sentence. Grimmjow savours every bit of it. 

Sensing his over-rapt attention, she deflects back to the photographs, puts on a different smile, mixed from many different components. 

“I got really lucky with my friends. They’re not getting rid of me any time soon.” 

She brings the pot back to the table and pours two cups of roasted green tea. He says nothing, breathing in the earthy fragrances of her tea, of her plants, her home.

“I think it’s important to have people in your life who know… not just the way you are now, but the way you have been, I suppose. To keep a hold of who you are, for yourself? I guess that’s part of why I cling onto my old school friends... But they’re also really just great company! Don’t worry about that,” she jokes, the corners of her eyes crinkling in a laugh. 

Grimmjow is about to open his mouth, but realizes he’s incapable of speaking. Instead he grabs his cup, covers his mouth with it and blows determinedly on the steaming water before taking a gulp. The liquid is still way too hot, but he forces it down, follows it with another, tries to ground himself in the heat. 

The first few years of his life are lost knowledge to him, but he got a second chance. A chance that Inoue apparently didn’t get, and— look at her and then fucking look at him. With a mother and a father who _have_ known him, all his faults, for over 20 years. Or knew, rather. Maybe. Maybe it’s less than 20 years, subtracting the years since— Is he still the person they know? Would his father even—

“Are you okay?”

He’s breathing quicker than he thought he was, short and shallow. His scorched tongue feels bumpy and raw, and rubbing it against the roof of his mouth is painful. Grimmjow tears his gaze from the teacup. 

“I’m adopted.” 

That’s not what he means to say. He doesn’t know what the fuck he means to say. He doesn’t know what he’s gonna say next, how he can possibly follow that up. Instead he sucks on his sore tongue. 

Inoue is looking at him as she asks the question, but his bizarre reply causes some fundamental change to the action, and suddenly he’s being _seen_ by her; the feeling true and complete, the kind of _seen_ a person might taste for a second and then spend a lifetime chasing. What she might know or understand about him plays no part. For one crystalized moment, Grimmjow knows he’s competing with nothing and no one inside her mind. For a moment he fills it all, unrivaled. 

He sees the moment pass, even as they sit unmoving, once again only looking at each other. 

“You’re kidding me,” she says, aiming for dry. “You, Jeigakaisu Ginjou, not biologically japanese? My world has been upturned.”

“Fuck you,” he throws out, with absolutely no heat behind it. Grimmjow laughs the unbalanced laugh of someone who’s cut it a bit too close to danger. 

“My very being is shaken. My…my sky has fallen down around me!”

“Bitch.” 

She receives the title with a childlike glee that is both clearly an act and also exactly what they need. The facade is back in place, keeping the both of them safe. But maybe there now exists a hole to peep through. 

The conversation defaults to safe territory, a lighthearted recounting of shenanigans at the party (and decidedly _not_ the morning after). Grimmjow definitely does not recall as much as Inoue, but she’s amused and unsurprised to hear about exactly how he was kidnapped from his home. Mainly she lists exactly how many martial arts titles Arisawa managed to acquire before he invited her to kick his ass. 

Within fifteen minutes her pull-out couch is decked out in fresh sheets, pillows and blankets, despite Grimmjow’s scoffing insistence that the couch in its base form was more than adequate. Inoue, now clad in a pair of peacock-patterned pyjamas, offers to boil her toothbrush if Grimmjow wants to use it before going to sleep. He does not. In that case, Inoue will be just across the hall if he needs anything. 

She disappears into a bedroom that he has never seen, yet knows has the exact same floor plan as his own. Her bed is most likely in the same place as his. A fleeting image of her settling into Grimmjow’s bed in her comfy peacock pyjamas forms in his mind’s eye, unbidden. 

He lays on bedding smelling of something light and floral, thoughts running a hundred miles a minute, so fast he doesn’t see it coming when his mind inevitably crashes into a deep, badly needed sleep.

  


* * *

  


Grimmjow knows exactly where he is when he wakes up. 

By the time he wanders out of the spare room, Inoue’s back in her chair. She’s faced away from him, but the muted clack of wooden needles steadily tapping against each other reveals exactly what she’s doing. He remains in the doorway for a little moment, listening to her work and to the rain still drumming against the window. This is the first time he’s seen her home during the daytime and he’s surprised to notice the walls are painted a warm shade of green rather than the greybrownish non-colour he’d registered in synthetic lighting. It suits the room. 

“You really did a number on this place, did I tell ya that?”

She jumps, dropping one of her needles to the floor and complaining, “Crap, lost my count.” 

He hears the scrape of the needle as she picks it up from the floor, and then a silence as she presumably fixes something in her work. Grimmjow smiles, unseen. How the hell does she keep startling so easily?

“You did tell me, actually,” Inoue says after a minute, looking over the back of the chair to beckon him in, “but you might have had too much to remember.”

And this makes his stomach drop, and it really shouldn’t. Plenty of her other friends were plastered for fuck’s sake, it’s not like he’s personally wronged her.

“You didn’t drink at all, didya?”

She shakes her head softly.

“No, I— have a weird relationship with it. My parents were addicts, and I guess I fear... the loss of control? Tatsuki says I’m a maudlin drunk anyway, so you’re not missing out on much. I just don’t like drinking with that many people around —even though I love them and wouldn’t want to hinder their fun.”

“Well aren’t you a little cycle breaker. S’kind of a buzzkill when your host is stone cold sober just watching you,” Grimmjow jokes, and pretends that the strain in his voice is from dry humor. He tries not to have a visible reaction to the concept of ‘addict parents’. Or to think about how consistently and unnervingly open this woman is.

“I’ve been told that,” she smiles, and it twists Grimmjow’s guts further because that smile just stole Inoue’s warmth and left her looking brittle and hollow. 

God, he needs a fucking cig. 

“Did you want some breakfast? I haven’t eaten yet.”

“Uh,” he states eloquently, wondering how the hell to bring her back out of herself again, “Sure, I’ll help.”

As Inoue begins taking various vegetables out of her fridge and lays her (spikeless) cutting board down before him, Grimmjow feels a sense of resigned premonition that he’ll be assigned the task of chopping something round - which he absolutely _can do_ , as long as the knife is sharp enough - only to be interrupted out of pity when it doesn’t look as neat as what Inoue will be used to seeing. A tomato is perfectly washable even if it rolls onto the floor. Obviously. 

She keeps on pulling greens out however, and eventually hands him something called ‘chives’ which looks… like grass. And also likely to remain stationary.

Having something to do eases the abruptly strange atmosphere, and soon Inoue’s smiles become genuine again. Or at least he hopes they are. Otherwise she’s freakishly good at faking it. 

“So,” she starts delicately, “I’m getting the feeling that you might not recall it, but at the party you did mention something about demolishing my kitchen wall.” 

Grimmjow eyes the wall separating the kitchen from the guest room and feels a completely familiar brand of trepidation towards the already passed unknown. 

“In a, uh… threatening way?”

“No,” Inoue laughs, and he breathes a little easier, still bracing for embarrassment, “In a professional way, although you offered your services free of charge.”

Oh. Grimmjow did not remember that, but now that she mentions it… there was a blurry moment in the snowy garden, of thinking Inoue looked very sweet and probably deserving of unpaid labour. 

“Your face! I’m not going to hold you to it, of course… To be honest I don’t have much to pay you with aside from baked goods and sweaters. This whole thing is really a budget project. But if— if you do have time at some point, I’ll owe you some really good favours - and I’ll do most of it myself, as long as you’re there! I’ve looked at lots of youtube tutorials already, it’s just with the lights and the plumming from the sink going inside that wall I would really… appreciate your experience.”

“Uh.”

Inoue blinks and pulls back, realizing that she still has a knife in hand and is looking slightly wild-eyed from cutting onions. 

“Sorry! You don’t need to answer now anyway, just… maybe think about it?”

“I will,” Grimmjow says, and he means it, and he thinks she can tell. 

They continue cooking together, and soon the smell of a mouth-watering omelette fills the kitchen. Fluffy as hell and stuffed with greens and bits of pork to the point where it’s almost pie-like. 

Inoue calls it “frittata”.

With her mouth more than half full of it, she asks Grimmjow a question that he didn’t know… was even a question.

“Are you gonna get your stuff back?”

She speaks fairly clearly around her mouthful, but he’s not quite sure he understood correctly. 

“Am I— yeah?”

“Because I got my phone and wallet stolen once and it was very liberating. For about a week there, I had no identity. I was just... a woman,” Inoue pronounces the word as if it should be capitalized.

For a moment he just chews his omelette and considers her statement. The food is absolutely delicious, but that doesn’t change the fact that he may have just spent the night in the house of someone actually insane. Grimmjow’s been homeless. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. 

Taking a glance at the snapshots of her friends and thinking _found family_ , he gives her the benefit of the doubt. 

“Still had your keys though,” Grimmjow points out with a gesture of his fork, “Bit easier.”

“It’s true. But you could go anywhere! You could hitchhike to Norway, I knew a girl who did that.”

“From _Japan?_ ” he asks and Inoue just nods enthusiastically. “You know I still got bills to pay.”

“Only if they know where to find you,” she says, conspiratorially leaning over the table. The glint in her eye says she’s kidding, but only as long as Grimmjow isn’t interested in complying with her suggestions. 

“This could be your chance to stop being a slave to society! You’re a man now.”

Since when was this woman actually hysterical. 

“I’m a Man now,” Grimmjow repeats solemnly.

  


In the end it turns out he didn’t need to wonder about getting in touch with Edrad. Not an hour later, a head of fire engine hair is visible well above the top of the fences. 

“Yooo,” Grimmjow calls, ducking out into the garden, beyond ready to get his hands on some goddamn nicotine. His fingernails are itching. He watches his friend briefly look around in confusion before spotting him and throwing his head back to laugh straight from his gut. 

“Grimmjow, you dog!” Edrad bellows. 

Behind Grimmjow, Inoue has come out to wave politely. Still in her peacock pyjamas.

“Oh, fuck off.”

Fucker doesn’t stop chuckling when he’s let in through the front door, and it doesn’t fucking help that Inoue also followed him out onto the green linoleum of the hallway. 

“It’s called a neighbourly favour, ass hat.”

“That’s one way to phrase it.” His so-called chucks a plastic bag at Grimmjow’s chest, which by the smell of it contains a jacket that he definitely did not bother cleaning. And then Edrad introduced himself to Inoue, all gallant as shit all of a sudden, and laughs again when Inoue tells him she hasn’t met any friends of “Y… Yagagakke’s”. 

As Edrad watches with his eyes all crinkled up, Grimmjow thanks Inoue both as sincerely and as _casually_ as he can manage. 

“And please think about what I asked, alright? I’ll find some way to compensate you, I swear,” she _has to go and say. Obviously._

He doesn’t even need to look at Edrad to know exactly what goddamn face he’s making.

  


* * *

  


“Jesus, what the hell did you do to her? She seriously offered to _compensate_ this guy?” D looks to Edrad, who nods even as his shoulders jiggle up and down in preparation for more fucking laughter. It is Monday morning - both literally and figuratively - and the first coffee break of the day, though Grimmjow honestly needed at least a noon level of caffeine in his system before starting this conversation.

“Just how ugly are we talkin’?”

“Oh no, this one was a solid 9,” Edrad corrects passionately, emphasizing the ranking with both of his hands a certain distance from his chest. D whistles and mimics the position of Edrad’s hands, squeezing at the imaginary tits and looking ironically like a complete tit himself.

“What keeps her from being a 10 then? Lazy eye? Dentures? Were they more like down here?” D moves his hands down to the level of his navel.

“She’s not a damn pensioner, you little shit,” Grimmjow complains, for some reason uncomfortable with the thought of Inoue being ranked a 9 or a 10 in anyone’s eyes. This statement is completely overlooked as D impatiently waits for Edrad’s unbiased opinion.

“Because I’m a taken man,” he states meaningfully, causing everyone including Grimmjow to groan.

“You did mention having a noisy bitch for a neighbour, but you didn’t say you were the one making her scream,” Yylfordt smirks over by the coffee machine, and Grimmjow feels about ready to drop a drill on someone’s foot.

“Oh for fuckssake, how many times do I hafta fuckin’— She’s just my neighbour. I’m smart enough not to shit where I eat.”

“Are you?” Yylfordt asks him mischievously. 

“Of _course_ I am,” Grimmjow smirks right back, suddenly inspired to change the topic. “She’s got some very compelling friends though. You shoulda seen the one I took home from her Christmas party. D would have _wept_.“

And D nearly does as Grimmjow mimics the posture of his hands, adjusting for a slightly larger size. 

“Nothing beats a good blonde,” he leers, catching Yylfordt’s eye again and thus missing how D rolls his eyes at Edrad.

Thus he makes it through their first coffee break relatively unscathed, the conversation flowing to other conquests, all stories they’ve all heard before and still barely believe. It’s a slow day, with what feels like more chatter than actual work. Shawlong has been victimized by the flu season and as a result, no one really cares about keeping with their already loose schedule. 

By the time lunch has rolled around, Inoue appears to have been thankfully and entirely forgotten in favour of placing bets on how long Shaw might stay sick and how far behind they can fall during that time. By the time their last coffee break begins, a downside to his absence makes itself known. Yylfordt announces that a bunch of shit has to be filed and that he’d been banking on Shaw coming back to work in time to do so, but as he’s waited until literally the last day of the month, a slave is now required. 

Numerous valid interjections are made, such as why Yylfordt failed to bring this up earlier, or that most of the problem could have been solved if he’d just gotten to it first thing in the morning. 

“And stuff myself into that office alone all day? What if I wanted to offer one of you broke bastards some overtime?”

A less than enticing offer, as it turns out. Edrad has a raging harpy waiting at home for him - not his own phrasing, yet universally understood by those who know him - and is duly given a pass. D has to take his mom to her flower arrangement class, which garners him a fair amount of dunking, but also a pass. All Nakeem has to do is _shake his fucking head_ and so it is left to Grimmjow. On the condition that Yylfordt at least leave the their reno site, _now,_ for the love of god, and at least _get started_ while the rest finish up work for the day. Christ. Sometimes he wishes he were a better liar.

At least the pay is good.

  


* * *

  


Even more so when it turns out there’s not any actual paperwork to do, just Yylfordt leaning against Shawlong’s desk like he wants to take it home. Vaguely he might feel a tad offended that Yyl was banking so hard on him having nothing else to do than work, but he’s dumb enough that he deserves it.

More importantly, that desk really fucking does it for Grimmjow. 

Yylfordt has never felt like his superior, but he _technically_ is, and Shawlong _definitely_ is, has always felt like a manager, even before he got the actual job, and it is this that he hyperfocuses on. Even though he respects the hell outta the guy, something in his hindbrain just wants to take a fucking shit on Shaw’s car just because he outranks Grimmjow. 

That’s what pushes him over the edge, as much as anything else - it starts all the way up in that stupid back part of his brain and rolls down his spine, picking up steam and heat, making him arch and hunch and _thrust_ and pound it all, everything, into Yylfordt— his boss, fucking his _boss_ over his _manager’s_ desk and making him come all over it, desecrating the stupid random piece of furniture that Grimmjow didn’t even know he had such a thing for. 

“Holy shit,” he wheezes and it’s so dumb, it’s dumb that it’s so _good_ , the pleasure so much more clear when he’s actually sober, fucking hell, he’s a dumb motherfucker and that’s okay, doesn’t need a single braincell for sex to be _amazing_. 

“I always wanted to do that,” Yylfordt says smugly, breathlessly, and he’s limp as a ragdoll on the desk, apparently not caring about resting his torso right where he just— Grimmjow’s dick twitches at the thought, still inside, and Yyl twitches back all around him. The feel of it makes him groan and he pushes, just a little, just for the hell of it, but he’s already going soft and when he pulls back again, he pulls all the way out.

Yylfordt grunts at the sensation, a soft and familiar sound. 

“Whaddya wanna do with this?” Grimmjow chuckles as he ties up the condom, “Leave it on top of Shaw’s waste basket?”

Yylfordt scoffs, grinning and slapping his leg weakly, like he’s still made out of overcooked noodles and tingly aftershocks. He slides his naked ass down to the carpet and then. Looks up at Grimmjow. 

It’s a weird look. 

“I’ve started seeing this guy,” Yylfordt tells him, and honestly when is he not? They get that sort of news at work several times a year and it’s never stopped Grimmjow from doing this type of shit with him anyway, but the way he says it is different now. His voice is gentle, careful even. Preemptively working towards not upsetting Grimmjow. 

“S’it serious?”

Yylfordt only hums, but his smile is soft and happy, and… a little sad at the same time. Or maybe just hesitant, Grimmjow might be projecting again. He sits down in Shawlong’s chair. 

“You tryna tell me this was a goodbye fuck?”

“Would you have enjoyed it more if you knew beforehand?”

Grimmjow lefts out a long, slow breath, rubs at his jaw and rests his gaze on the filing cabinet for a moment. He can feel Yyl’s eyes on him. 

“... S’pose not.”

“Want a goodbye kiss?”

“Get your ass up here,” he scoffs, hauling Yylfordt into his lap on Shawlong’s shitty office chair. A goodbye kiss, what the fuck. As if this has been some kind of victiorian fucking courtship. Grimmjow shoves his tongue in Yylfordt’s mouth just to be a bastard. 

This was some proper whiplash. He’s still not sure he quite believes that it’s the end of anything, but that’s not really something you say to someone newly in love. The change in Yyl is tangible, a mental distance once the words have been spoken, like he’s too busy justifying the kiss to himself to actually enjoy it. Yylfordt never gave a shit before, never dated guys with enough presence to reach into the nameless thing between the two of them. This new guy clearly casts a longer shadow.

Grimmjow pulls away. There’s no point really, but the idea that this won’t happen again is really fucking weird to know in advance and so he brushes their lips together one more time. Wonders if it would’ve been better to just not have been told.

Yylfordt gets up, pulls up his pants and finds a tissue to swipe roughly at his stomach before pulling his shirt back down from where it was hooked behind the back of his head. Grimmjow stays where he is for a minute, aware that he looks like he’s on the shitter with his shirt still on and his pants and boxers still around his ankles. Vaguely he regrets not having undressed this time, or at least not having properly undressed Yyl. 

Dragging his balls along Shaw’s chair once more for good measure, he rises and straightens himself out. 

“So how long you been seeing this guy?” Grimmjow asks, out of a sense of… courtesy? Who’d have thought.

“A few weeks,” Yylfordt grins, one of those ones where the heart just moves the mouth of its own accord. He tries not to be judgemental of that time frame.

“Is there really nothing going on between you and that neighbour of yours?”

“No. She’s a good girl though,” he answers truthfully, although he’s not quite sure just why he’s addressing Inoue like a kid and not a grown woman.

“You should seen what she’s done to her place. Shaw would replace me in a second.”

This makes Yylfordt sigh and run a hand through his now slightly rumpled hair, “Shawlong isn’t out to get you, Grimmjow. He’s a good guy. Jesus, I woulda named the company ‘Granz Renovationz’ if it wasn’t for him. Two z’s.”

“That’s not what I was— agh. I was thinking maybe… you know we have so much leftover shit filling up this place?” he gestures to the uneven stacks of laminate flooring, the mismatched tiles and buckets of primer about to expire. “She’d actually put this crap to use.”

“You’re asking me if you can give it to her?”

“I started a scrap with her boyfriend at her party. Or, after the party, but—” He falls silent at the disgustingly sympathetic expression Yylfordt is giving him. Not a single bit of jealousy in there, just the nosy curiosity that’s always been a part of the man. 

“Hey, fuck off, it’s not like that.”

“I ain’t sayin’ nothing, brother. But I’ll talk to Shaw about it.”

“Right. Fine. Okay.” The subject is thus dropped, leaving… nothing more to be talked about, really. 

That’s it. 

On the bus ride home, Grimmjow tries to remember the last he fucked someone sober that wasn’t Yylfordt (though he’s fucked him plenty drunk) and he comes up depressingly short.

A memory keeps prodding at him, and he resents the fucking sentimentality of it - but standing there in the bus, wrapped up in his winter coat, being jostled between a dozen other winter coats in the most inane imitation of a soft mosh pit - there’s really nothing else to do but zone out and let his brain take him away. And his brain really feels like reminding him of that first time, when he’d only been clean for a few months and still woke up every day feeling shaky and skinless, a pitiful premature thing thrust into the world before gestation was complete. 

He doesn’t remember who touched who first, just remembers Yylfordt in the dim light of his TV, asking him so carefully, even with his hand already on his dick, to make sure he wasn’t taking advantage. 

Grimmjow said no at the time, of course, but later he’s come to second guess. Not that Yyl was taking advantage of the piece of human garbage living on his couch, but that he himself was… He always knew, way back, that Yylfordt liked him. That Yylfordt liked him more than he was liked back. 

That was part of what he’d enjoyed most about the whole thing, if he was being honest.

But things change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HUUUGE thanks to plouton and mothwood for providing insightful commentary to my screams of despair ✨ also fun fact i knew a girl to hitchhiked from japan to norway


End file.
